Has Apple Ironed Out Production Issues for the iPad Mini?

Apple bears cited production delays, the result of low yield rates at the makers of the device’s aluminum chassis, and smaller crowds than previous Apple product debuts as evidence that demand was soft.

At the end of the day, it’s a combination of both high demand and production delays that produces wait times, and it has been impossible to determine what factor has played a more significant role. But now that the wait times are coming down, observers are asking the same old question: has Apple ironed out production issues, or has demand cooled off?

CHEAT SHEET Analysis: With Apple’s High Quality Pipeline, it Doesn’t Matter

To call the iPad mini a competitor to Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) similarly-sized Nexus 7 tablet or a challenger to Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle Fire tablets would be the politically-correct way to put it. Data from the IDC predicts that by 2016 Apple will still command a leading 49.7 percent of the tablet operating system market, with a full 10 percentage-point lead over Android.

One of the core components of our CHEAT SHEET investing framework studies a company’s product history and examines its future product pipeline. As consumers know, regardless of whether demand is cooling off or Apple has iPad minis coming out of its ears, the company will do what it does best and release a product that sells like hotcakes on a cold day.

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