Has Apple Ironed Out Production Issues for the iPad Mini?

Ship-by dates for the iPad mini on Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) website have dropped to just one week for the first time since the product launched, and the bears and bulls can’t agree why.

Is This an Indication of Increased Supply or Decreased Demand?

Over the weekend of its launch, nearly 60 percent of Apple Stores polled by Topeka Capital Markets reported that they had completely run out of all models of the iPad mini. Perhaps more significantly, every single store survey reported that it had run out of the 16-gigabyte model.

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Rolling down the model list (and up the price scale), 90 percent of stores with inventory sold out of the 32-gigabyte in black/slate, and 76 percent sold out of the 32-gigabyte in white/silver. That’s a successful launch by pretty much any measure.

When the iPad mini was unveiled, Apple bears reacted by saying that it lacked oomph and was relatively unimpressive compared to the hype. Apple bulls had to do nothing more than point to the sales volume to dispel those notions — any product with a wait time like the iPad mini is clearly in tremendously high demand.

However, the bears kept growling…