Things do not seem to add up for Apple nicely at this point in time, where their stock price has taken quite a beating since the recent highs in the previous quarter. Well, here is more doom and gloom coming your way if you are an Apple fan; apparently Sharp Display has dramatically reduced their iPad display production of the 9.7-inch variety at its Kameyama plant in Japan to just the bare minimum required so that the line continues to run. Reuters cited several sources that the close shave with production grinding to a half follows a slowdown which happened last December. Neither Apple nor Sharp has stepped forward to give an explanation for the dramatic shift in output to date.
Do you think that this is nothing but a seasonal drop in demand, or could it be because there is a new iPad refresh on the way? How about a different scenario, where the iPad mini’s success has eaten into the regular iPad’s sales, so much so that Apple is pushing Sharp to stop producing full-sized iPad displays so that it can concentrate more effort and attention to the iPad mini display? How about this, Apple might have looked at other suppliers to produce their iPad displays, hence resulting in Sharp’s drop in production.