Report: Apple ordering 65 million iPad screens for 2011 - Page 2

By becoming one of, if not *the* largest consumer of pad computing screens, Apple will get the best per-unit prices. This will help them drive down their component costs and help them keep their margins up.

Apple is already the world's largest consumer of flash memory, and they therefore control the market. They enjoy the best per-unit pricing in the industry as a result of their huge orders, and force competitors to pay higher per-unit prices for the remaining supply of flash memory.

They're in their own "awkward tweener" category. "Tweenlet"?

I couldn't agree less.

The iPad is no longer the younger step-child to the iPhone. It's prominence alone in sales guarantees it will be a first tier design product that gets the most current advances designed for the iPhone that still meet their price points.

The multi-core A8 and the new OpenCL 1.1 based GPU is the new baseline for all iOS based products moving forward.

With AMD you are comparing to a company that has a completely different focus, and long term demonstration of having difficulty with process shrinks. They broke the trend exactly once and made up ground with Hammer, then have slowly lost it again since.

Samsung is already shipping multi-layer memory chips at 40nm, hint hint, its in the A4. Their "3D" memory line will go general distribution to the open market later this year. (Does that look like a partners contract embargo to you? It does to me.) The Samsung releases talk of moving the 3D memory to the 30nm class soon after. While that's not a sure sign they have that licked, it could be taken as a good sign that they have generated some stacked memories at the 30nm class size, and a A4 follow-on would be a good candidate for having done that. A 30nm class A4 would do very nicely in an iPhone, as it should be extremely battery friendly, leaving any potential dual core A5 for the iPad as a product line differentiator.

Remember, die'n is the easy part and when you're dead, you're dead for a long time. In fact, you will be dead longer than you were when you were alive!

Best of luck with your plan!

That's deep. About six feet deep.

I have been looking at this 65 million iPad display rumor from a different perspective.

First: 65 million == 5.4 million per month

Second: there were rumors that Apple had ramped up to making 3 million per month or 36 million units per year

Third: Analysts and pundits have estimated 2011 sales in the 30-50 million range -- let's assume 48 million or 4 million per month is a reasonable estimate

With me so far?

Do we agree that 48 million is an attainable number?


If so, what does Apple know, think -- or what can they do to drive that additional 1.4 million units per month and 17 million units per year?


Here are some interesting questions to ponder:

What if all those displays are not only for iPads?

What other devices could use the same size display?

Can the iPad as we know it be repurposed for other untapped markets -- including specialty markets?


The last question has some possibilities -- things such as:

1) an inexpensive high-quality alternative to a graphics tablet or CAD tablet to be used in conjunction with a computer.

2) an inexpensive alternative to an in-car emergency, navigation and entertainment system (sold by the car mfgrs) -- including multiple displays in the back

3) components of an in-house, office, apartment, building, campus, etc. security and communication system

4) a portable monitor for running diagnostics (and control) on auto repairs, smog emission tests, machine setup and calibration, server farm monitoring/maintenance

5) Kiosks

6) Point Of Sale Terminals

7) OiPC -- One iPad Per Child

8) a LAN/WiFI network of intelligent displays tailored to shop floor activity, supply and tool checkout, inventory, shipping/receiving, machine setup and maintenance manuals, training manuals, manufacturing diagrams, etc.

Those are just for starters -- I bet you guys can come up with a lot more!

What are your ideas?

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You're comparing a forecasted EPS for iPad to a current EPS for the company. Not sure what you're getting at.

In any event, you could just as easily have taken the per-share iPad-implied price as % current stock price to get at the point you're trying to make, and done so in a more simple and obvious way. It's not a big surprise that it's high; that's because 65 million is high.

This assessment would appear to be correct.

Apple had no idea how the original iPad would be received, hence some rather conservative parts choices (not even mentioning the difficulty in getting the device to work and caught up to the latest version of iOS).

With nine months of iPad sales, the company has a greater understanding of where this product line falls in terms of its overall business. The fact that they placed orders for up to 65 million iPad screens is indicative of how they are now able to forecast. They had no such insight twelve months ago.

AppleTV might still be a hobby. iPad is not. It is the real deal and there is much growth ahead for the iPad market.

Apple will still be choosy about which parts to use in their iDevices, however I expect to be more parity in the next several years than before amongst iDevices, especially when there is unifying desirable functionality like FaceTime.

Well, yeah. It's monster. Not much to base this on but current EPS. The markets decide what kind of multiples earnings are worth, so I thought it was cleaner to just leave that out and reduce it to EPS. We'll have to wait a few days to start seeing estimates of how iPad sales will feed into Q1 EPS, then maybe we'll have a better basis for estimating what 65m iPads (assuming the number is realistic) means over the course of a year. I suppose we'll get one from Andy Zaky soon.

I don't think the 65 million iPad 2010 forecast is realistic. I am able to believe that it is a figure Apple conjured up to light a fire under the supply chain, so there are no constraint issues. I think a figure like 50-55 million is more in line.

By inflating their estimates, Apple is not letting revenue sit on the table like they did for several months of the iPad launch. Plus, an inflated order might result in lower per-unit costs during negotiations. The 65 million unit isn't crazy, but really on the edge of what Apple could do. It does force their three display suppliers to compete on pricing.

Apple's experience in such matters goes back several years now, with the iPhone displays, NAND flash memory, etc. It's still a buyer's market: Apple's. They have the market weight.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ae?s=AAPL+Analyst+Estimates


Which is why my original post prefaced what I said with the caveat: "if true."

I think the screens are for just iPad2 which will sell up to 50 million units in 2011. I like your creativity though. There are amazing, many, things iPad2 can do. It's a matter of having enough for everyone in the world that wants one. Apple's goal is to sell you a defined model and let the third-party accessory and app developers create the ecosystem.

BTW Apple could theoretically hit 60million but I think anything beyond 50 will be a huge strain on Apple. 4 million a month average for 2011 is pretty reasonable. But we've been wrong before, and iPad is the new Mac. Macs seem ridiculously hard to use when compared to an iPad! Yes total n00bs are buying iPads! It is scary.

I really did know this. Promise.