LG iPad Panel Shipments Dropped By 90% in January 2013
The 9.7 LG Display iPad had a pretty good run in China last year in December, considering they had orders that reached nearly 6 million units. Unfortunately for them, in January 2013 the number of orders dropped to 600,000 units. The explication we found in the news for this 90 % decrease in sales, was that they had a very bad performance rate in December, which led to a big number of unsatisfied or disappointed users.
We tried to dig deeper, but the response we mainly received from the sources inside supply chains was that this decrease was caused by an unfortunate mixture of factors, like the increasing demand for iPad Mini tablets and low end tablets, but also due to the fact that in January (the month right after the holidays), the sales drop everywhere not only in this area. This information was extracted from the DigiTimes reports.
Some of the reports show that LG still has a big number of iPad mini orders (3.5 to 4 million panels are being shipped per month) and that for now, this number represents a big part of all the shipments they currently make. The only moment when the company will be able to recover after this major decrease in sales, is when the Apple company will hold up its production in order to get prepared for the next generation iPad.
Related to the next generation iPads, we found in some recent reports information according to which the next iPad 5 will have the same touch screen structure, thin film G/F2, the iPad mini is using now. If these information are true, then we have reasons to believe that this decrease is somehow related to Apple preparing for the new next-gen tablet, and to the technological changes in the displays.
So far, we couldn’t find out a specific date for the release of the iPad 5, since all the reports transmit different info regarding it, but most of them point towards October 2013. It is possible though, that the actual date could be much closer than we expect. We found recently some very well argued information through out rear shells or case leaks, which place the release sometimes around July, maybe August this year.
If what we’ve heard and seen so far is not true, and Apple is just decreasing the panel orders for iPad due to a lower demand from the market, we will certainly know about it from Wall Street. And that should happen in a few days from now.
