Apple catches up with iPad demand, but not with iPhone 4

The Apple iPad has rarely, if ever, shipped quickly in it’s stellar sales history, but the Apple site now says it can ship a unit in 24 hours. Shipping times on the iPhone 4 remain a bit more distant: 3 weeks.

Apple has now sold well over 3 million iPad tablet computers. Most of those iPads were delivered significantly after they were purchased, with delays often running 2 weeks between the order and the ship date. Apple even pushed back the release date for international customers by exactly a month to keep the U.S. orders shipping, finally taking international orders in May, according to PCMag. It has taken them 4 months, but finally the Apple Web store says that they can ship you an iPad in 24 hours.

Now, of course, come the questions as to the reason for the lack of a shipping delay. Is the iPad now shipping on time because all of the snags in the production of the device have been ironed out, or is it rather because the demand for the tablet is down? That is surely an important question and one which Apple analysts and pundits will chase around the table for some time to come. The likely answer is that it is a little of both. The company has finally satisfied the pent-up demand for the long-rumored tablet, and now it is down to demand-as-usual (which still appears to be high), and the production line is probably running more smoothly as well.

The iPhone 4, however, is still backed up a couple of months after its release. If you order one today, you are very unlikely to see it in the flesh, uh metal and glass, for close to 3 weeks. Part of this may be due to manufacturing problems, things such as the non-appearance so far of the white iPhone, but a lot of it is pure supply and demand. Given another couple of months, it is expected that the iPhone 4 will ship much closer to the 24-hour side as demand wanes a bit and problems on iPhone production line get cleaned up.

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