by Fresh off the roller coaster ride that was the launch of the iPhone 5s, it looks as though Apple might have some more supply woes in store for the near future. During today’s quarterly earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked if he thought the company could meet the demand for iPad minis with Retina display this holiday season, and he sounded far from optimistic.
“It’s unclear whether we will have enough for the quarter or not,” Cook said during his company’s quarterly earnings conference call, as reported by AppleInsider. “We know how many we will have, but you really don’t know the demand until you start shipping.” The question was fielded by analyst Steve Milunovich, who works at UBS.
Rumors have persisted over the last few months that Apple wouldn’t be able to handle the demand for the device due to some snags in the production process, and indeed, the very fact that Apple didn’t choose to release it at the same time as the iPad Air seems to support such conjecture. Even so, Cook reportedly said it’d be “an iPad Christmas” and that Apple would do “fairly well.”
Cook closed by saying he was “confident” that Apple would nevertheless beat expectation, although he claimed that he wasn’t so focused on unit-by-unit sales for the device as on customer satisfaction.
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