Apple's big iPhone causes delays for bigger iPad for business
Apple's planned release of a 12.9-inch display iPad aimed at the enterprise won't come til early 2015, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Sources familiar with Apple's display supply chain told the publication that production of the larger iPad was due to start in December. However, as the company is struggling to meet demand for the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, with output remaining "unsatisfactory", production of the 12,9-inch iPad is being impacted. It will now begin at the start of next year, the WSJ said.
Rumours of an iPad with a larger display iPad than the existing 7.9 and 9.7-inch inch models emerged in August. The plan then, according to Bloomberg's initial report, was to begin producing a bigger iPad in early 2015, so the extent of the delay to its production is hard to quantify.
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Nonetheless, according to the Wall Street Journal, Foxconn, which makes the iPad and iPhone, is scrambling to meet the production schedule for Apple's phablet.
The iPad is Apple's second largest source of revenue behind the iPhone, accounting for around 35 percent of its third quarter 2014 revenues. However, iPad sales have been waning as demand slips in developed countries without being offset in emerging markets.
A bigger iPad could help fill that void by tapping the higher-value enterprise market, where the iPad still dominates among tablets. However, tablet penetration in businesses overall remains low.
The 12.9-inch iPad could be tied in with the Apple and IBM partnership announced earlier this year, which will see the companies build over 100 enterprise apps for key verticals and bring across IBM's cloud services across device management, security, analytics and of course Watson, with Big Blue pushing hard to gain traction with mobile developers and enterprise for the cognitive computing system.
Next week Apple will round out its hardware line up for 2014 at an event at its headquarters in Cupertino. It's expected to announce its next generation of iPads as well as new Mac models and general availability for OS X Yosemite. The launch of the new desktop OS will also put the finishing touches to features in iOS 8, such as Continuity, which lets users complete tasks across iOS and Mac devices.
The other piece of unfinished business is Apple Pay, which was announced at the iPhone 6 launch in September, but won't launch in the US until later this month.
Apple watchers have noticed that iOS 8 adoption rates have been slower than iOS 7. Besides Apple's embarrassing update iOS 8.0.1, which borked the phone function in new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices, the over the air (OTA) update for iOS 8 isn't as seamless as previous years, requiring 5GB of space to complete the OTA install.