Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday that customers could expect iPad and Mac availability to be affected by supply chain issues in the second half of 2021.
Cook’s comments came during Apple’s fiscal Q2 2021 earnings call. Cook said that while he would not provide product-level details about the Mac or iPad lineups, but said supply shortages and constraints would likely affect both later in 2021.
“We expect to be supply-gated, not demand-gated,” Cook said, after explaining that the supply chain problems would primarily affect Apple’s iPad and Mac lineups.
Cook’s comments came in response to a participant’s question about the ongoing chip shortages that are affecting the entire electronics industry. When an analyst asked Cook when supply constraints affecting Apple might begin to ease, the Apple CEO replied that it was hard to give a “good answer.”
“Most of the issue is legacy nodes, not just in our industry but other industries as well. In order to answer that question accurately, we would need to know the true demand from each player and how that changes over the next few months, so it’s difficult to give a good answer,” Cook said.
“We have a good handle on our demand, but what everybody else is doing, I don’t know. We will do our best, that’s what I can tell you,” he added was already seeing an impact from the shortages, and that
Earlier in the earnings call, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that the Cupertino firm Apple expects greater seasonal revenue declines heading into the June quarter.