Unlike its unveiling at the big Apple keynote event on Oct. 22, the iPad mini with Retina Display, or iPad mini 2, made a quiet appearance on the Apple Store in the early morning on Tuesday Nov. 12.
The discrete release - and the fact that Apple did not give the iPad Mini with Retina Display a specific release date at its unveiling (simply saying "later in November), unlike the new generation of Apple's full-sized tablet, the iPad Air - underlines a problem Apple is having with its display suppliers for the new 7.9-inch Retina screen.
Currently, the iPad mini with Retina Display is only available on the Apple Store website and for pickup, in person, at Apple Stores. The tablet is available in several countries, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and the U.S., but problems with manufacturers of the Retina Display have created "low supplies" of the tablet at its launch - especially considering the extra demand due to the ensuing holiday season. Reports have Sharp, one of Apple's display suppliers, unable to create its IGZO displays up to Apple's Retina standards and being prone to burn-in issues.
While this is considerably less disastrous than the situation foreseen earlier in Sept. by IHS iSuppli, which saw the iPad mini 2 being so rare as to be nonexistent for a late 2013 launch - or at best, with shipments falling below 4 million units to as few as 2 million, disappointing the vast majority of iPad mini 2 hopefuls and leaving only the iPad Air on most late-holiday store shelves.
But not to worry, iPad mini fans, while the second-generation iPad mini is not going to be as available before the holiday season as the iPad Air, according to a report from Apple Insider, the Cupertino giant plans to make the diminutive iPad much more common on store shelves in early 2014. According to analysts at KGI Securities, a market-forecasting group, Apple will increase shipments of the iPad mini with Retina Display over the coming months, brining a 102 percent increase over the last quarter of 2013, which brings the total up to about 4.5 million iPad mini 2s.
The iPad Air, which was expected to be in full supply and given a firm release date of Nov. 1, is expected to sell as many as 10 million units in the last quarter of 2013, with a steep drop after the new year of 43.1 percent. Is this proof of a successful, if unintentional, drive from Apple for more demand for its more expensive iPad Air in place of the iPad mini with Retina Display? Unlikely - it's just the economics of supply and demand interacting with a slight manufacturing crisis and the holiday shopping season.