David Hsieh, DisplaySearch:

[...] Apple had planned to sell 40M iPad minis (7.9”) and 60M iPads (9.7”) in 2013. However, the real­ity seems to be the reverse, as the iPad mini has been more pop­u­lar than the iPad. We now under­stand that Apple may be plan­ning to sell 55M iPad minis (7.9”) and 33M iPads (9.7”) in 2013.

Does DisplaySearch know some­thing no one else knows? No. Just to be clear: No one out­side of Apple knows Apple’s iPad sales plans. And only a few inside Apple know.

via John Gruber. Matthew Panzarino:

DisplaySearch esti­mated those num­bers from what it saw as a shift in a spe­cific split of com­po­nent orders. In fact, these esti­mates based on a sin­gle com­po­nent (TFT LCDs).

Since the LCD is a com­po­nent used by both the iPad and the iPad mini, it is the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble a mar­ket research firm could accu­rately esti­mate iPad and iPad mini pro­duc­tion. The only prob­lem is mar­ket research firms like DisplaySearch do not have full access to actual LCD pro­duc­tion data to state what Apple’s iPad sales plans are. The best a mar­ket research firm can do is pro­vide an highly edu­cated guess. I should know; I used to work at DisplaySearch.