Increased yield rates and strong sales have prompted Apple to increase orders for the iPad mini, with volume reaching 12 million of the smaller tablets by the end of the year.
Apple’s smaller iPad is indeed turning into competitors’ worst nightmare. After announcing sales of three million new iPads in three days, the iPad mini is now outselling full-size iPads and could easily comprise half of all iPads sold in December.
DigiTimes reported that Apple had originally estimated 10 million iPad minis would be shipped by year end, but component shortages caused by weak yields cause the company to adjust the estimates downward to only 6 – 8 million units.
Something must have changed, but what? Well, yield rates improved and the iPad mini’s popularity went through the roof!
From DigiTimes:
With yield rates improving, iPad mini shipments for the first two months of the fourth quarter have already surpassed eight million units, and should successfully break 10 million for the quarter with a chance to reach 12 million, the sources noted.
Apple’s supply chain was able to provide about 4-4.5 million iPad mini’s worth of components in both October and November, and it looks like they’ll be able to do the same in December.
So don’t sound the doomsday bells for Apple’s iPad mini yet. Barring any apocalyptical happenings on the 21st, this should be a really good quarter for the little tablet that could.
