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Apple iPad 2 to face chop after three years of availability

by Mark Tyson on 17 February 2014, 13:04

Tags: iPad

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The Apple iPad 2, which first went on sale in March 2011 looks set for an exit, according to "people familiar with Apple's plans," talking to Apple Insider. Production is apparently being ramped down as people generally make a choice between the iPad Mini and iPad Air when making a purchase nowadays. Also today there is news that British industrial designer Jony Ive has disappeared from Apple's US executive profiles website. Is this due to his departure or just a glitch in the content on the website?

Second generation iPad on the chopping block

After nearly three years of availability Apple's second generation iPad looks set to be removed from sale. Apple Insider has heard that production of this highly successful device is being run down. Its overlap in price with the much more popular 'iPad mini with Retina display' model is a perplexing question that will be answered by the end of its availability.

Apple Insider says that the new iPad mini with Retina Display, rather than the still available $299 iPad mini, is the reason that the iPad 2 is on the way out. The logic seems to be that these two iPads share the same price point of $399.

The demise of the low spec iPad 2 was predicted before Xmas by an analyst who predicted just 0.3 million sales of this model in the face of competition from other iPads. The iPad 2 has been an undoubted success and figures show that until the launch of the latest iPad Mini and Air models it accounted for nearly 40 per cent of all iPads in the hands of iOS tablet users.

Jony Ive, where are you?

The removal of Jony Ive's details from Apple's US executive profiles website is causing quite a stir. Ive is Apple's Senior Vice President of Design and while he has been removed from the profiles summary page he is still on the bios page. This isn't normal if someone departs from Apple: normally both profiles would be zapped and a press release issued.

UPDATE: he's back in position four, as shown below. This happened in the last few minutes as I was writing, as evidenced by the earlier screenshot.



HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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This begs the question: will the A5 equipped hardware (iPad 2, iPad Mini and iPhone 4s) get ios8? They probably will, iPad Mini will be less than 2 years old when the next OS is released and iPhone 4s is the current base model. Wouldn't wager on the A5 hardware getting ios9 however.
Scow Captain;1124113
This begs the question: will the A5 equipped hardware (iPad 2, iPad Mini and iPhone 4s) get ios8? They probably will, iPad Mini will be less than 2 years old when the next OS is released and iPhone 4s is the current base model. Wouldn't wager on the A5 hardware getting ios9 however.

Probably yes but feature limited, the iPad 2 misses quite a few things already. Side effect of rapidly advancing SOCs - quick obsolescence. Just like PCs 10-15 years ago, give it another 10-15 years and I reckon mobile CPUs will probably outstrip OS demands as well.

The other reason to junk the 2 is it being the only one left with the old connector, it will enable Apple to cleanup the store inventories and streamline with no “which version of this accessory do I need” and given that the whole iPad sales approach seems to be aimed at being simple I can see the advantages…