One of my worst fears may finally be coming true. iSuppli has raised concerns which suggest that Apple may be heading towards a hard to counter iPad 2 parts shortage crisis as these parts come from Japan who has been affected badly by the disastrous earth quake.
iSuppli who did a deep and thorough tear down of the second gen iPad found out that five components of the newly launched Tablet come directly from Japan:
The IHS iSuppli teardown analysis of the iPad 2 so far has been able to identify five parts sourced from Japanese suppliers: NAND flash from Toshiba Corp., dynamic random access memory (DRAM) made by Elpida Memory Inc., an electronic compass from AKM Semiconductor, the touch screen overlay glass likely from Asahi Glass Co. and the system battery from Apple Japan Inc. There potentially are other components from Japan in the iPad 2, however, the teardown analysis process cannot always identify all components’ countries of origin
A positive point to note here is that some of these parts can be sourced from other countries. Even though the companies producing Japan exclusive parts escaped the earthquake unscathed , the threat still exist as the shipping and logistical issues are yet to be resolved.