Apple revises iPad shipments as iPad mini becomes more popular
With the launch of the iPad mini last year, Apple certainly hoped to have a competitive foot into the popular 7-inch tablet market, but even they couldn't have guessed at how popular their iPad mini would get. So much so, in fact, that Apple has revised their shipment estimates for 2013, reducing the original 9.7-inch model's shipments to 33 million from the original 60 million worldwide estimate. Meanwhile the iPad mini has gone from 40 million to 55 million units worldwide, according to DigiTimes. The overall shipment, however, has dropped from 100 million iPads (both SKUs) being shipped in 2013 to 88 million.
The change in shipments will largely affect suppliers for the screens, such as LG Display and Radiant Opto-Electronics who provided panels for the 9.7-inch model getting hit with revenue decrease. Conversely AU Optronics and Coretronic will see an increase in their revenue streams as shipments for display panels are expected to go from under one million a month to about 1.7 million units a month as result of supplying panels to Apple.
For consumers this means that the cheaper, and admittedly more viable iPad mini will be available more easily, while the larger 9.7-inch model could potentially see a price cut later in the year.
