July 1 is the start of a new quarter and Apple certainly hopes that the supply issues that have kept the numbers of its iPad 2 tablets on the low side are now over with. The iPad 2, which launched earlier this year, has suffered from two supply disruptions. One came from the March earthquake that devastated parts of Japan. The other came in May when a Foxconn manufacturing plant in China exploded, killing several people and also reportedly slowing down production of the iPad 2 tablet.
Now it looks like Apple is ready to give the waiting world a lot more iPad 2 units to buy. According to a report from Digitimes, Apple plans to ship out between 12 million and 14 million units of the tablet in the third quarter. That's a huge increase from the amount that shipped in the just concluded second quarter. Digitimes claims that Apple only managed to ship between 7 million and 9 million iPad 2 units in the second quarter.
According to the article, Apple has been taking steps to ensure that there will be plenty of iPad 2 tablets to go around. It states, "Apple has been piling up its inventory of iPad 2 components such as panels in the second quarter to minimize the risk of facing component shortages." While there have been rumors that Apple might release the third generation of the iPad before the end of the year there's no concrete evidence to suggest this will actually happen.
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