Buoyed by strong sales, Apple orders 2M extra iPad minis

iPad mini promo (users 005)

Apple’s smaller iPad is indeed turning into competitors’ worst nightmare. After announcing sales of three million new iPads in three days, the iPad mini is now outselling full-size iPads and could easily comprise half of all iPads sold in December.

And with eight out of each ten iPad owners planning to stick with Apple, no wonder the Cupertino firm has now increased orders for the 7.9-inch tablet, with the volume reaching twelve million iPad minis by year’s end…

From the DigiTimes story:

Apple originally estimated shipments of 10 million iPad minis for 2012, but due to component shortages caused by weak yields, Apple later adjusted the volume to only 6-8 million units.

So what changed?

ipad mini hands

Two things:

Yield rates improved and the iPad mini’s popularity surged.

With yield rates improving, iPad mini shipments for the first two months of the fourth quarter have already surpassed eight million units, and should successfully break 10 million for the quarter with a chance to reach 12 million, the sources noted.

Apple’s supply chain provided about 4-4.5 million iPad mini’s worth of components in both October and November and will maintain similar supplies in December.

“As for the first quarter of 2013, the sources expect volumes to stay at about the same level as in the fourth quarter of 2012”, DigiTimes writes.

And if yesterday’s report by DigiTimes is accurate, then Pegatron has reasons to celebrate as the contract manufacturer reportedly grabbed the majority of iPad orders for the next three years.

Apple Tuesday fixed a bug affecting Wi-Fi performance on the iPad mini and iPhone 5 with iOS 6.0.2, an incremental update.