Apple’s new iPad proved to be another hot-seller yesterday, with hundreds lining up at stores across Asia to be the first to get their hands on the 4G-ready tablet computer as the company’s share price hit US$600 for the first time.
As consumers lined up around city streets to buy the iPad, one firm that took the new device apart said Qualcomm, Broadcom and Samsung Electronics had all held onto their prized roles as key parts suppliers.
The new iPad is a progressive development of Apple’s tablet, with a more powerful CPU and screen and better camera. It was not marketed as a revolutionary product like earlier versions, yet Apple devotees still snapped up the latest version.
Photo: R euters
“The iPad is already a pretty mature product and it’s hard to revolutionize it any further,” Hong Kong-based IDC analyst Dickie Chang (張祐菖) said.
“It’s slightly heavier than its predecessors and I think Asian consumers will be more concerned about that,” he said. “Going ahead, with Tim Cook at the helm now, I think he may have to come up with another product to mark his stamp. That could come in the form of launching a smaller iPad with a longer battery life, for instance.”
The buzz helped propel Apple shares to record highs in US trade on Thursday, with Apple stock touching a high of US$600.01 before easing back.
It peaked half an hour after the first iPad went on sale in Australia, extending the market worth of the world’s most valuable company to almost US$560 billion.
Only a month earlier, the stock price had crossed US$500 for the first time. The stock has jumped 45 percent this year.
At Thursday’s closing price of US$585.56, the stock is far more expensive than the US$499 starting price for a Wi-Fi iPad.
The new iPad went on sale yesterday in 10 countries, including the US, Canada, Singapore, France and Britain, with diehards lining up overnight in front of Apple stores in Munich, Paris, London, Singapore and Hong Kong.
“After this, well, I’ll first of all open it up and check it’s as beautiful as I thought. Then I’ll get some sleep,” said Shintaro Aizawa, 16, who waited 15 hours outside a Tokyo store.
Just across the border from Hong Kong in Shenzhen, mainland China, people keen to get their hands on the new iPad had to wait for the tablet to be smuggled into China.
“We don’t have iPad 3s yet, but some will arrive later in the day when the students deliver them to us. We’ll have more supplies over this weekend,” a store operator in Shenzhen said.
Wall Street expects a strong start for the latest iPad and some analysts even expect sales of the current model to overtake the iPad 2. Apple will continue to sell the iPad 2, but dropped its price by US$100 to start at US$399.
Apple might sell 65.6 million iPads, according to an estimate by Canaccord Genuity analysts, who also raised their target price on Apple stock to US$710 from US$665. So far, the company has sold 55 million iPads since it was launched in 2010.
Tablet sales are expected to increase to 326 million by 2015, with Apple largely dominating the market, research firm Gartner said. The iPad competes with Samsung Electronic’s Galaxy and Motorola’s Xyboard, among others.
The third-generation iPad is seen more as a collection of incremental improvements, such as a high-definition “retina” display and a better camera, rather than a major innovation.
The inner workings of the iPad are similar to previous models, based on a “teardown” by a tinkerer from California gadget-repair firm iFixit, who lined up in Australia to get one of the new tablets and quickly took it apart for a Web blog.
iFixit cofounder Luke Soules’ pre-dawn teardown at a Melbourne computer shop found Apple suppliers Qualcomm, Broadcom and Samsung had maintained their key roles in the newest iPad.
The iPad includes a Qualcomm LTE cellphone chip and a Qualcomm wireless modem for 3G and 4G. Broadcom supplies a semiconductor handling wireless tasks like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, according to iFixit.
The iPad’s new A5X application processor, with improved graphics horsepower, is based on -energy-efficient technology licensed from Britain’s ARM Holding and is manufactured by Qualcomm, as in past Apple devices.
Analysts recommend caution in drawing conclusions from the teardowns because Cupertino, -California-based Apple sometimes uses more than one supplier for a part. What is found in one iPad might not be found in others.
Still, teardowns remain a key source of information for investors interested in betting on Apple’s suppliers, and the appearance of unexpected chips can move stocks.
“There are a whole lot of hedge funds out there that like to shoot first and ask questions later,” said Alex Gauna, an analyst at JMP who covers technology stocks.
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