14 DAY TRIAL // With Black Friday knocking on the door, Apple is experiencing constrained iPad stock, with the new mini model shipping in 10 working days, and the Air shipping in over a week as well.
On November 12, after kicking off sales of the iPad Air, Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said “The response to iPad Air has been incredible, and we’re excited for customers to experience the new iPad mini with Retina display.”
“We think customers will love both of these thin, light, powerful new iPads, and we’re working hard to get as many as we can in the hands of our customers,” Schiller added.
Apparently, he was right. Until recently, Apple showed a 1-3-days quota for Retina iPad mini shipments, while the iPad Air would be delivered in as little as 24 hours in some countries.
As soon as physical sales started, people apparently grabbed all the tablets Apple put on store shelves. Right now, the company is struggling to make enough units to satisfy demand, and is listing shipping times of 5-10 business days for the mini and 5-7 business days for the Air.
The situation is identical in most of Apple's online stores, including in the United States, Canada, Europe, and some Asian territories.
These quotas apply to all configurations, regardless of color, wireless connectivity, or storage capacity. With Black Friday only days away, Apple had better improve availability, or else people might flock for competitors’ offerings.
iPad Air is the latest generation of Apple’s flagship tablet computer, a product which it touts as a “category defining device.” Sporting a high-density 9.7-inch Retina display in a thinner and lighter design, iPad Air weighs just one pound, and has an advanced, 64-bit A7 processor inside.
The iPad mini with Retina display brings all the pixels from the 9.7-inch Retina iPad and crams them inside a 7.9-inch display, delivering one of the finest visual experiences on a small tablet device.
Both tablets have ultrafast wireless connectivity (faster built-in Wi-Fi and expanded LTE cellular connectivity), and both ship with the redesigned iOS 7 pre-installed.