Apple’s App Store Reduces U.S. Delivery Times for iPad Mini

By: Ali Raza  |   February 4th, 2013   |   Apple, Business, News, Tablets

According to the latest update, Apple’s App Store for the U.S. has decreased the stated delivery times for the iPad Minis from 3 – 5 days in to 1 – 3 days. This sudden drop in the delivery times can mean one of two things. Either the demand for iPad Minis has slowed down or the tech giant has been able to cover up the supply gap by swiftly increasing the production of the tablet than. The possibility of increased production of iPad Mini seems more likely because at the announcement of last quarter’s earnings Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that his company failed to fulfil demand for the slate. He said, “Customers love the Mini and we wish that we could have made more and we ended the quarter with significant backlog.”

 

Cook said that his company would be able to a “achieve supply-demand balance” for the 7-inch version of the iPad by next month. “As we indicated last quarter, the iPad Mini gross margin is significantly below the corporate average, and we expect to be able to meet demand for this product in the March quarter, which again we could not in the December quarter.

 

Cook also said that iPad is the “mother of all opportunities.”

 

“On iPad in particular, we have the mother of all opportunities here, because the Windows market is much, much larger than the Mac market is,” Cook said. “And I think it is clear that it’s already cannibalizing some, and I think there’s a tremendous amount of more opportunity there and as you know I’ve said for two or three years now that I believe the tablet market will be larger than the PC market at some point, and I still believe that. And you can see by the growth in tablets and the pressure on PCs that those lines are beginning to converge.”

 

This can be clearly judged from the fact that in the last quarter Apple successfully sold 22.86 million iPads, whereas during the same time in 2011 the California-based firm was able to sell 15.4 million units of the tablet. However, Apple did not break down the current sales figure for iPad therefore the number of minis sold during last quarter is unknown.

 

Source: Cnet

Photo: Cnet