Mix hearsay, rumor and past practice — add a cup of coffee or three, and that’s breakfast, lunch and dinner for an Apple blogger! The word out of Asia is that the Cupertino company’s top manufacturing partner, Foxconn, will begin iPad mini 2 and iPad 5 in August.
Assuming past as prologue, that points to a late September or October iPad mini 2 and iPad 5 ship date — Apple and its partners need six to 10 weeks to make, ship and stockpile “enough” product ahead of the launch. Quite naturally, a Fall launch jibes well with previous Apple practice.
Whence this speculation? SlashGear, quoting unnamed Asian supply chain sources, reports that iPad mini 2 and iPad 5 production will begin in August with Foxconn doing the honors.
And, these new Apple tablets will be part of the company’s Fall army of products, which will also include the 2013 Mac Pro, as well as Haswell MacBook Pro, Mac mini and iMac models.
Add in Apple’s upcoming iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, iWork for iCloud and iTunes Radio.
Will anyone notice the iPad mini 2, Retina or not, and iPad 5 arriving in that cloud Apple marketing? Perhaps we’ll all forget about Christmas, as well…
What’s your take?