Well now, when one picks up a new tablet one expects the components in the slate to be brand new and now cast offs, right? I mean if you purchased an Apple iPad 2 you’d expect the panel to be new and rightly so, but apparently this isn’t the case when it comes to Chinese iPad clone makers out there in knock off land.
Apparently if you happen to pick up a cloned iOS tablet in the land of dragons and gun powered, chances are your clone iPad will have a panel that has been rejected by Apple, meaning the panel wasn’t up to standard for their Apple iPad 2.
According to an article over on DigiTimes, according to unnamed Taiwan sources, as usual, under par 9.7-inch panels that fail to meet the requirements of Apple for their Apple iPad 2 may have been purchased by Chinese white box makers, for use on their own 9.7-inch iPad clone devices.
Apparently the sources indicated that two main suppliers of the 9.7-inch IPS panels for Apple, Samsung Electronics and LG Display, when producing panels for the iOS slate a due to yield rate a portion is said to be below Apple’s standards for their use; however those panels rejected by Apple doesn’t mean they are defective “in terms of usability.”
The sources also indicated that an estimated quantity of 7 to 9 million Apple iPad 2 units were shipped globally in Q2 of 2011 with shipments expected to increase to 12 to 14 million in Q3. Jointly Samsung and LG shipped an estimated 12 to 15 million panels in Q2.
Apparently according to the source, the “gap between the shipments of panels and iPad 2” is apparently expected to consists of 3 portions, panels in the Apple iPad 2 assembler’s inventory, such as Foxconn, and to increase shipments in Q3, panels that do not meet Apple requirements, and the 3rd portion is panels sold on to Chinese white box vendors, read cloners.
So basically if you are tempted to pick up a cheap Apple iPad clone over in China you are likely to get a device that houses a panel that wasn’t good enough for the real Apple iPad 2, and if you think you’d be safer picking up an Android tablet from one of these white box vendors think again as the source say Chinese white box vendor SmartDevices launched an Android 2.2 9.7-inch tablet called the T10 for US $293 with other white box vendors also pushing out Android 9.7-inch slate, presumable all sporting the sub-standard iPad 2 rejected panels.