Apple predicted a good holiday season for the iPad and equipped their manufacturers with a 6.1 million 9.7″ LCD display order but things didn’t turn out that well for Apple as iPad mini beat out iPad sales by a healthy margin. Apple was more cautious in January and placed an order of just 1.1 million units which is 80% less than the previous months, may be because of stock carried forward from previous months. February seems to be on a normal expectation level again for Apple as the number of LCD shipments has risen by 158% showing a positive sign for the iPads. Most of the LCD displays are currently being offered by Samsung and LG and even after the rumours about the next generation circulating hard and strong the demand for current generation iPad seems to be quite good.
Despite the demand for iPad displays the overall shipments of large LCDs slipped by 4% to 64.9% compared to previous months. Shipments seems to be a bit dull because of low demand worldwide and fewer working days in China due to the Chinese Lunar New Year. IHS also said that the 9.7″ panels defied other categories and showed a positive growth whereas other categories posted a decline in shipments. The shipments of 7.9″ displays of the iPad mini declined by 8%, the 7″ displays shipments declined by 12% and overall shipment of tablet displays declined by 7% down to 18.3 million.
Apple is rumoured to launch a retina display iPad mini and new version of iPad soon and most of the displays will be supplied by Sharp, AUO and LG. Samsung most probably will not be shipping any displays to Apple as per recent reports.
The iPhone Help
The iPhone Help