iPad Mini wait times drop by a week, just in time
As shoppers gear up for the holidays, Apple has lowered the ship times for the iPad Mini from two weeks to one.
The new iPad mini is shown next to a full sized model at an Apple event in San Jose, Calif., on Oct. 23, 2012. iPad Mini stock seems to have stabilized in advance of the holiday shopping rush.
Reuters
Wait times for the Apple iPad Mini have dropped from two weeks to seven days.
According to the Apple website, consumers who pre-order an iPad Mini today should see the pint-sized slate on their doorsteps within a week – good news for diehard Apple fanatics, and even better news for Apple, which has an interest in seeing Mini stock stay full through the peak holiday shopping season.
As Lance Whitney of CNET notes this morning, the improved wait times seem to fly in the face of a recent Digitimes report on iPad Mini supply chain shortages. DigiTimes pointed specifically to AU Optronics, one of two companies – LG is the other – tasked with created the screens on the iPad Mini. Mini production, DigiTimes reported, "might only reach six million during the period largely as a result of production delays at AUO."
AUO subsequently played down the DigiTimes report.
At any rate, it's likely to be a very good winter for Apple. The iPhone 5, which launched this fall, has sold exceptionally well, and one analyst, Shaw Wu, has estimated that Apple will sell up to 46 million iPhone 5 units before the current fiscal quarter is up. In related news, Apple is gearing up to expand the availability of the iPhone 5 to Brazil, Russia, Taiwan, and South Korea.
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