“Apple Inc will be unable to widely roll out a new version of the iPad Mini with a high-resolution “retina” display this month, people who work in the company’s supply chain said, leaving the gadget without the sharper screen found on rival tablets from Google Inc and Amazon.com,” Clare Jim and Reiji Murai report for Reuters.
“Apple’s supply chain is only now gearing up to make retina displays for the iPad Mini, which means the gadgets could be available in only limited quantities this year, if at all, and the company may miss the chance to cash in on the year-end holiday shopping season, the sources said,” Jim and Murai report. “Cupertino, California-based Apple has come under pressure to preserve market share and bolster sales against rivals that are rapidly raising specifications and lowering prices.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Pressure” from whom? Clueless analysts and feckless pundits, that’s who.
Newsflash: Apple sells premium products at premium prices to premium customers.
Jim and Murai report, “Apple declined to comment about any product launches and the sources at companies in Apple’s supply chain declined to be identified due to the confidentiality of the matter… The reason behind the delays in manufacturing the retina display screens for the iPad Mini were unclear. One source at a supplier said there were delays in Apple’s certification of panel producers, which were given strict power-saving requirements. LG Display Co Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s display unit and Sharp Corp all vied to manufacture the panels, supply chain sources said.”
“Given the time required to ramp up screen production, a retina display-equipped iPad Mini would not be available in large volumes until early next year, the sources said,” Jim and Murai report. “The sources expected Apple to either wait until early next year for a full-fledged launch of a retina display iPad Mini, or to make a retina version only available in limited quantities before the end of the year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
The supply chain is very complex, and we obviously have multiple sources for things. Yields might vary, supplier performance might vary… Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret that data point as to what it meant for our business. – Apple CEO Tim Cook
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Reuters is the new National Inquirer. This same story is re-vomited before each Apple iPhone or iPad release.
I figured it out, Apple is the source behing these stories. They leak a story that there’s going to be a short supply, then when they release the new product, everyone rushes out to get one so they don’t miss out.
Run up the sales and make a mint, genius!
All the android manufacturers aren’t limited by supply constraints because there is far less demand so victory for them. Or something.
Exactly the same problem Apple had back when they’d licensed clones in the mid-90s. The cloners could offer higher-speed CPUs because they were selling a mere fifty thousand units, but Apple had to wait months to offer the same speed Mac because they needed a million units and the initial chip supply was very limited.
A chip manufacturer gives almost ALL of it’s limited by production items to it’s biggest customers (not to the bit players)
As I recall (though I wasn’t really involved with Mac’s back then) Several of the “mac clone” makers were caught over clocking it’s CPU’s. While this works OK in the short term (may of todays hobbyist PC “building” gamers over clock both thier GPU’s and CPU’s in order to squeak more performance out of them) However clocking a chip on the edge of it’s limits causes far higher error rates (not a huge problem for gamers but it is in the real world) and also severely shortens the lifetime of the chip (again not a big problem for the hobbyists they swap out their CPU’s and GPU’s on a regular basis, but to the average consumer this is a very bad thing)
“rivals that are rapidly raising specifications and lowering prices” and lowering their profits to virtually zero.
Hey, Apple should do that too!
You do realize that when Amazon and Google lower their hardware prices, their share price goes up exponentially. Apparently certain companies can get away with that price-cutting tactic. Only Apple can’t. In fact, Apple can’t do anything to please Wall Street because Wall Street favors Android over iOS and Tim Cook happens to be Wall Street’s most hated CEO. Icahn said Tim got a bit testy over supper just because he asked Cook for a measly $150 billion payout.
Gee, I hope not. A mini with retina display is on the top of my Chrustmas wish list. Gold with 64 GB memory. Say it ain’t so Tim.
Yet more Reuters FUD.
I could have written this. More FUD
Where is my fingerprint constraint ?
Oh, where is supply chain genius Tim Cook lately? I hate to say that Samsung has a small tablet with full HD display. Exactly the resolution the iPad mini should have. And yes it has a terrible operating system but 10 hours of power. Apple should speed up. And now give me your middle finger as usual when one says anything not so positive about Apple.
This would indicate that it’s easy to have no supply constraints when there is relatively low demand. The demand for the retina iPad Mini will probably be significantly higher.
these trolls won’t accept real numbers, so they will not get real perspective, give up on them!
ship/sell ratio is huge for the other phones, numbers of phones sold as fast as they come off the line, that is apples feather!
The key features are the A7 and M7 chips in both the iPad and iPad mini. Would like the “retina” display in the iPad mini. However, same number of pixels as the older iPads in a smaller screen is already higher resolution. If I need more, I will air play it to my AppleTV on my HDTV set.
The 64 bit A7 is what we really need at this point people. (The bio-identification would be another new feature with the new low light photos.) Twice as fast for gaming and smooth play. All samsung tablets are 32 bit and this can’t be copied until late 2014 or 2016.
Speed please!
There’s no way Apple has that many A7 processors in inventory. It’s likely a low-yield chip for the time being and scarce as hen’s teeth.
Samsung will just crank up their quad-core chips to above 2.5 GHz and claim comparable benchmarks to the A7 to prove 64-bit processors have no significant advantage over their 32-bit brethren.
We don’t know. Right now Apple has the A7, the Touch ID login, the retina display, and the M7 chip that could be added to the iPad mini. If one did all that once it would probably lower the margins. We will just have to wait and see what they decide to do.
I’m so glad I didn’t wait for the retina iPad Mini! My kids have been enjoying theirs for quite some time now!!!
Lucky Kids. 😛
I compare my mini to retina and I don’t see much difference.
I so agree with silverhawlk, This rumor keeps surfacing again and again, “don’t buy now, hold off, the retina mini is right around the corner” I am glad I bought my daughters mini’s for christmas last year it they have been great and a valuable asset with their schoolwork.
In addition I agree there isn’t much of a difference in “perceived fuzziness” between my R3 iPad and the girls mini’s. That said you have to wonder if it is worth it, going retina quadruples the number of pixels and with that the amount of work required to display all those pixels
So I have ask myself if they (Apple) offered both last christmas; if I could have bought what I did or one with a retina display (but was thicker (and or heavier) and/or didn’t run as long and possibly cost more?
Nope I would have bought exactly what I did. They are a marvel just the way they are, wouldn’t compromise their price, or size, or runtime just to get a barely perceptible improvement in resolution.
I agree with the post above about the need for the A7. With the success of the 5s, it is possible the real constraint might be the A7. The reason why ThumbID works so well is speed. A two second delay would make that feature unusable. I can’t imagine a new iPad or iPad mini without this feature. Photo/video editing and “iWork” document production are the killer apps for the new iPads- the reason to upgrade. PS: my iPad 1 is still perfect after more then 3 1/2 years of use, still 10 hours of battery life- never in a case, just some scratches on the back.
Worse case for Apple: a “gift coupon” for a new iPad or Mini for Christmas.
Well then, let’s just keep the baseless speculation going…
Lack of retina screen supply for the mini must mean that Apple suppliers are first pushing new screens for the iPad Pro with 15″ retina display. Why 15″? Because that’s large enough to display a full sheet of paper (letter or legal) at ~100% scale.
More rumors: since Apple is migrating toward 16:9 display ratios, then it needs to stop production of the old 4:3 ratio, which of course involves changeover costs & delays.
More rumors: Apple will finally deliver a 27″ retina 4k resolution display with the new Mac Pro, offering the supreme graphical & visual workstation available for prosumers. That will take up a bit of supplier capacity too.
Can’t wait to see all the updated same looking white sterilized hospital apps with sissy piss all over it in high resolution.
Thanks Jonny Ive got a pink dildo up my ass!
I don’t get it. 2-3 years ago the news was that Apple took all the capacity so no one else could make anything. These days Apple require too much capacity sorbet can’t make anything… Or maybe its just this self perpetuating stories of bad news that just can’t stop. Nothing negative comes up any more so stories have to be made up, positive news turned into negative and so on.