“Ibiden, Tripod Technology and TTM Technologies have been named as the initial PCB suppliers for a second-generation Apple tablet PC, which is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2011,” Ingrid Lee and Jessie Shen report for DigiTimes.
“Four more suppliers will be added to the list in February 2011, when shipments of the new iPads ramp up, according to industry sources,” Lee and Shen report.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Jax44” for the heads up.]
Captain obvious
If Apple is accelerating the annual refresh, then they’re “gunning for bear” in this new sector.
And as a shareholder, I like that.
IPad- catch me if you can, but you can’t, shameless copiers.
The iPad Revolution continues.
Take unnamed “industry sources” with
skepticism. Maybe the “sources” agenda
is to jack up the value of stocks?
@daugav369pils
Or the agenda may be to stunt Apple’s holiday sales
It’s Digitimes, take with copious amounts of salt.
First iPad which I’m using right now for apple was more like an let’s see if there’s a market product. I believe from now on apple will improve it’s product, I really wish iPad was a completely independent gadget, no need to sync to Mac in order to download ios updates, just to import or export movies and music. I wish it has a finder too, and USB port would be good. Camera not such a fan.
I think, if anything, Apple will want to move the annual refresh of the iPad FURTHER from the holiday quarter, not closer. People are already hesitating to buy an iPad now in anticipation of an April refresh. Refreshing the iPad in the first quarter of 2011 (unless we’re talking about very late March), will simply make this years’ holiday shoppers mad and insure that next year’s holiday shoppers delay their purchasing decision.
FalKirk:
The number of people who are even vaguely familiar with the product refresh cycle is minuscue; these are generally just analysts and extremely dedicated fans. General population (hundreds of millions in the US, billions around the world) are completely oblivious to such stuff. They will see a commercial on TV, they will go next Friday and buy it for their aunt/spouse/teen…
Apple may just as well push the iPad refresh up a bit; there is a huge gap between the early January refresh (usually Mac-related stuff, carry-over from the old MacWorld days) and a June-July iPhone refresh. With the iPad release in April, it’s a bit closer to the iPhone than they would want, and they’d likely want to slide it more into the first quarter of the year, so that it can even out the quarterly numbers a bit more (Jan-Mar Q belongs to iPad, Apr-Jun could be the iPhone, Jul-Sep is back-to-school, with iPods and some iMacs, Oct-Dec is the holiday killer).
More importantly, they would give a bit more time to the engineers to spread the work and focus between critical hardware devices.
There is a clue in the article that this would be a late 1st qtr event anyway. 4 more vendors will be added in Feb.
Gift cards have changed things a lot. It use to be after Christmas was the big sale off of the overstocked products. Now it is the second wave of buyers, especially young people. A new iPad, at least the announcement of one, could capture a lot of those sales. Also it’s the time when the real competition is going to come out. Apple will really hurt their sales with something that kicks their ass before they are in the market, they did this to Sony and MS with new iPods.
Don’t care for the iPad, too heavy, too much work, too cumbersome, too lame.
MacBook Pro sure, Linux sure.
@ Bunches – the iPad is lighter than the MBP, and does not require any extra work and is the complete opposite of cumbersome for most folks – it is liberating. Try it, you might like it. They have a very friendly return policy if you don’t want to keep it.
The first iPad was scheduled for a Q1 release and missed it by days. This isn’t much of a shift at all and nobody should be surprised.
If Apple is moving up the release of the 2nd Gen iPad it might explain why you can find discounted iPads at TJ Maxx and Marshalls as well as Target & Wal*Mart. Apple is dumping their inventory ASAP.
7 inch?I prefer getting a 9.7… More laptop-like in a very portable thing.
Everything you need to know about iPad:
http://www.aneesoft.com/tutorials/ipad/index.html