A report says Apple is still prioritizing the production and delivery of its iPhones, causing iPad wait times to be as high as 9 weeks in some places.
iPad deliveries can take over two months in some places
Apple customers may have to wait up to nine weeks to get a new iPad. Nikkei Asia says it has been tracking the delivery times for Apple products in 25 countries and regions, including the US, China, and Japan, since early November 2021.
Consumers are still waiting up to nine weeks for delivery of new iPads as Apple struggles to clear a backlog that emerged last year amid the global chip and component crunch, according to Nikkei Asia’s analysis of more than two months of shipping data.
The analysis of delivery times of Apple’s top-selling iPads reveals an average wait of around 50 days for a 64GB iPad. In comparison, wait times for Apple’s iPhone 13 lineup have reduced significantly from over a month in late 2021 to around 10 days now.
The publication notes supply constraints hit the iPad hard which caused “revenue for the segment dropping 14.1% on the year to $7.3 billion in the three months through December.”
“Since iPad has greater than 8-inch displays, they need a lot of display drivers and unfortunately display drivers are produced at legacy process nodes — which is at the core of the semiconductor supply crunch,” said Wayne Lam, senior director of research at CCS Insight, a London-headquartered research firm.
Although the company saw a 14% decline in iPad sales in the first quarter of 2022 (October – December 2021) quarter, the tablet was popular among students and creators and its sales saw a high number of new customers.
The Cupertino tech giant is rumored to be holding its first special event of the year in late March or early April so we will have to wait and see if the company will be able to announce and ship the next-generation iPad Air or if it will continue to be affected by supply constraints.
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