Anyone buying a 2020 iPad Pro from Apple.com will need patience. Orders placed on Thursday won‘t ship until next month.
It’s not really clear why, as this tablet is widely available at Apple retail locations.
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Waiting weeks for a 2020 iPad Pro
Place an order on June 11 for the base model 12.9-inch iPad Pro from the online Apple Store, and the earliest delivery date is July 6. It could be as late as July 13. The same goes for the 11-inch version.
But Cult of Mac did a check of Apple Stores around the United States and found that the latest iPadOS models are in stock in Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco and Seattle.
The obvious answer is to order the iPad from Apple’s website, and then pick it up at an Apple Store. But not everyone lives in easy driving distance of one of these retail locations. Especially as many of them are still closed during the coronavirus crisis.
And ordering from other online retailers isn’t automatically a better option, as not all online retailers have every version of the 2020 iPad Pro ready to ship. Amazon is “temporarily out of stock” of the 12.9-inch base model, for example. But Best Buy has plenty of inventory.
Could be COVID-19 related
No one outside of Apple knows why the 2020 iPad Pro is in short supply online, if not in stores. There are some obvious possibilities, though.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted production of iPad and iPhone in China this spring. Apple’s supply of this recently-launched tablet perhaps hasn’t caught up to demand.
Plus, given the pandemic, people are less likely to go to a brick-and-mortar Apple Store, even to buy a new 2020 iPad Pro. And many of this company’s retail locations remain closed. Others have only curb-side service. So online demand may be much higher.
This is certainly not a sign that a new iPad Pro will be released at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference later this month. The current version debuted a mere three months ago.
