If you follow Apple news, you're probably familiar with the iPhone 13 shortages plaguing certain models in the series, which has stopped many people getting their hands on the fruit company's newest.
Well, there's good news in store for iPhone fans, but it's a double-edged blade.
According to Nikkei Asia, an Asian business site, Apple has reduced production on iPads in order to use more components on the iPhone 13 models instead. This works because the iPhone 13's chipset is also used in the new iPad (2021) and iPad mini (2021).
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The website states that iPad production is down 50% on Apple's goals, but that's because iPhone 13 sales are forecasted to be higher than iPad ones.
Nikkei doesn't specify which iPads are affected, but since the iPad Pro (2021) uses the M1 chipset which iPhones don't have some believe that isn't impacted.
Soon, then, we could see iPhone 13 availability rocket back up - but at the expense of iPad stock.
This measure is likely no surprise, thanks to the global chipset shortage which means phone components are relatively scarce. Apple isn't the only company affected.
Analysis: good and bad news for Black Friday buyers
With Black Friday 2021 coming up on November 26, but the global chipset shortage raging on, lots of people are wondering how many deals on big tech products will crop up.
This news suggests Black Friday iPhone deals could be a bit better than expected - we didn't expect many iPhone 13 Pro deals at all since that seems to be the product most affected by shortages, and even discounts on the standard iPhone 13 seemed unlikely.
However, if stock comes back in time, we could see better deals. There won't be fantastic discounts, because the iPhone 13 is fairly new and Apple deals on Black Friday are often quite lackluster, but there could be a few more than we expected.
That's not the case for iPads though, and this news suggests deals could be few and far between. If there's limited stock of the new entry-level and mini iPads overall, retailers aren't going to be throwing them out the door with huge price reductions and good deals. And even if there are reasonable discounts, they'll likely sell out very quickly.
So this news is good and bad for Apple fans over Black Friday, depending on what new gadget you were hoping to pick up. Thankfully, the Lego Black Friday deals are unaffected, and that's what you should be looking forward to anyway.
