The iPad stormed out of the gate last April with strong sales that even surprised Apple executives. Nearly 3.5 million iPads later, Apple still finds itself struggling to meet demand for the first commercially successful tablet device to ever hit the market.
Reuters is reporting that LG is having trouble meeting demand for iPad displays due to ever increasing sales.
“We are considering increasing production lines for iPad products but overall supply is likely to remain tight until early next year,” said LG Display CEO Kwon Young-soo. “Demand (from Apple) keeps growing and we can’t meet it all. Apple may have to delay launches of the iPad for some countries due to tight component supplies and strong demand.”
Apple, of course, is planning to start selling the iPad in 9 new countries today– Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore.
Perhaps readjusting to higher than expected demand, Apple in late March signed a $240 million deal with Samsung to supply 3 million LCD panels for use on the iPad. Notably, the LCD screen used on the iPad is the device’s most expensive component, and though it’s 3x the size of the iPhone screen, it’s 5x as costly.
July 24th, 2010 at 7:09 am
The iPhone 4 has a 3.5″ display, while the iPad has a 9.7″ display (measured diagonally). To say that the iPad display is “3x the size of the iPhone screen” based on diagonal measurement is “mathamatically nieve” to say the least. The iPad screen is almost eight times larger than iPhone screen in terms of area ( 40.6 sq in. vs. 5.2 sq. in.).