Screen supplier failure leads to delay in iPad Pro production

[[128713]]

According to Bloomberg, sources said that the production of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro will be delayed until September this year, which is much later than previously rumored.

The news also said that Apple originally planned to start producing iPad Pro this quarter, but the reason for the repeated delays was that there was a problem with the screen supply chain. According to Apple's official supplier list, there are currently three manufacturers providing screens for the iPad - Sharp, Japan Display and LG Display.

While it is unclear what exactly went wrong for the three suppliers, it is clear that they are all having a hard time. Sharp and Japan Display saw their market shares fall by 2.6% and 1.3% respectively in Tokyo, while LG's market share fell by 1.8% in Seoul.

Due to the saturation of the personal consumer market and the impact of large-screen smartphones, iPad sales continue to be weak. However, in Tim Cook's view, the savior of the iPad is not individual consumers, but enterprise users. In order to meet the needs of enterprise users, Apple not only plans to launch a 12-inch large-screen iPad, but also cooperates with IBM to develop enterprise-level applications for the iPad. Even the newly filmed iPad Air 2 advertisement has changed the past style of emphasizing personal entertainment and turned to focus on more vertical and specialized scenarios. This shows that Apple is shifting the positioning of the iPad from an entertainment tool for individual consumers to a PC substitute for corporate consumers in work scenarios.

In fact, while iPad sales are declining, there is indeed a lot of room in the enterprise market that has not been penetrated. According to IHS Technology, the iPad enterprise market will surge to around 110 million units in 2018, while only 19 million iPads were sold in the enterprise market in 2013.

Billionaire Carl Icahn holds the same view. In an open letter to Tim Cook last year, he said that people underestimated Apple's stock price because of the poor sales of iPad. After Apple and IBM cooperate to develop the productivity version of iPad Pro, it will detonate the iPad sales market and Apple's stock price.