Apple’s shipments of a new version of its iPad tablet computer may be delayed till June from April because of “production bottlenecks” at manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry, Yuanta Securities said.
The delay arose after Cupertino, California-based Apple made design changes before the Lunar New Year, according to a report by Vincent Chen and Alison Chen, analysts at Yuanta. Jill Tan, an Apple spokeswoman in Hong Kong, declined to comment on the report. Edmund Ding, a spokesman for Hon Hai, didn’t answer calls to his Taiwan and China mobile phones.
“Our checks suggest new issues are being encountered with the new production and it is taking time to resolve them,” said Chen in the report. “As a number of Android 3.0 tablets are being launched in April and May, the delay in iPad 2 shipments may give the Android camp a brief window of opportunity.”
Hon Hai, the Taipei-based contract manufacturer for Apple, dropped 2.2 per cent to NT$111.50 at the close of Taipei trading, the lowest level since December 2.
A two-month delay in introducing the iPad could lower the tablet computer’s shipments to 23 million units this year, as compared with the brokerage’s current forecast of 30.6 million, according to the report.
The iPad, introduced in April, accounted for 17 per cent of sales last quarter. The company has sold more than 15 million iPads so far, Vice President Eddy Cue said on February 2. The iPhone is Apple’s top-selling product, accounting for 39 per cent of revenue last fiscal year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Faster chips
Apple started producing an updated version of the iPad, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. The new version is thinner, lighter, has more memory and uses faster chips than its predecessor, the newspaper said. It also has a front-facing camera that would enable videoconferencing, the Journal said.
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Samsung, HTC and Hewlett-Packard are also offering tablets to compete with Apple. Global shipments of tablet devices will more than double this year, led by Apple and Google’s Android-based models, according to researcher IDC.
The iPad faces intensifying competition from Android tablets made by Samsung, Motorola Mobility Holdings and Acer. The Apple product accounted for 75 per cent of global tablet shipments last quarter, according to Strategy Analytics.