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Apple iPad is a Faster, Cheaper iPad Air 2 (cnet.com)
Say good-bye to the iPad Air, it's just the iPad now. From a report on CNET: Apple announced on Tuesday morning that it will be dropping the price of the 9.7-inch iPad by $70. The tablet's A8X processor will be getting an upgrade too, jumping over to the A9 chip used in the iPad Pro. The upgrade will replace the iPad Air 2, but the iPad Mini 4 will live on, starting at $399. The updated pricing will start on Friday, at $329 for the 32GB model and $459 for the 32GB WiFi with cellular service model. It's Apple's cheapest iPad, after the company decided to replace the iPad Mini 2, which started at $269. Although Apple's iPad is leading the tablet market, it's still a tumbling one as demand takes a decline thanks to people holding onto their tablets longer.
Basically, yup. The iPad Air 2 was effectively a prototype 9.7 inch iPad Pro, and bears more in common with the current 9.7 inch iPad Pro than it does with the new iPad, for exactly the reasons you specified.
To be fair, the iPad Air 2 remains a great machine, and by all indications that trend has continued into the Pro line. I still use my iPad Air 2 on a daily basis and have no plans to replace it anytime soon, given that it's still operating just as well today as the day that I bought it. But with a situation like mine leading to fewer sales, it makes sense that they'd back off on the specs a bit and offer people a more entry-level model to the line, that way they don't leave such a huge umbrella in their lineup that a competitor can easily work under.