Will the iPad mini have a Retina display this year or won’t it? The rumor cycle back and forth concerning the smaller iPad’s high-res aspirations have become frustrating to follow for anyone who has been hoping Apple will correct the sole point of criticism about its 7.9-inch offering in time for Christmas.
If you’ve had your fingers crossed (or parts beyond), good news. IHS iSuppli, one of the companies that really knows what is going on in Apple’s supply chain, says displays suitable for the Retina iPad mini are “on track” for a fall launch.
Quoting a source at IHS iSuppli, CNET reports that “production of displays for the expected high-resolution version of the iPad mini is at levels similar to last year’s launch of the first-generation model.”
“Based [what] we are seeing in the [production] pipeline…The volumes are similar to the iPad Mini that we saw in Q4 of last year,” said Vinita Jakhanwal, director of mobile and emerging displays at IHS iSuppli, referring to display production.
That’s a very assuring observation. If IHS iSuppli is actually seeing 7.9-inch Retina displays in the supply chain in numbers suggesting a fall launch, well, there’s only one real possibility in regard to which device that display is going to end up in.
It was always hard to imagine how Apple could get away with releasing a 1024×768 iPad mini 2, so I’m heartened by this news, as I imagine other Apple fans are too.
Source: CNET
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
