Apple display partner GIS is reportedly winning at life thanks to Apple iPad Pro and MacBook Pro orders

11-inch iPad Pro
11-inch iPad Pro (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • GIS makes display components for Apple.
  • Its parts are in the refreshed iPad Pro and MacBook Pro lineups.
  • Demand for those parts is helping out during a normally quiet period.

Apple display partner General Interface Solution (GIS) is expecting a decent second quarter despite it traditionally being a quiet one, all thanks to Apple. The company believes that strong demand for the refreshed iPad Pro and MacBook Pro linups will stand the company in good stead due to the number of people now working from home thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

This comes via the reliably unreliable DigiTimes which also notes that GIS saw first-quarter revenues fall by more than a third sequentially and almost a quarter year-on-year.

Apple's just released 13-inch MacBook Pro, coupled with the previous rollouts of 12.9- and 11-inch iPad Pro in March, will help drive sales momentum at GIS in the second quarter, which is likely to continue into the first half of the third quarter, said the observers.

Increased orders in the region of 40% are expected in terms of touch displays for the new iPad Pro, according to the report. The revenues from those tablet screens make up a huge chunk of the revenue expected for the quarter.

With demand from the notebook and tablet sectors running higher than expected, GIS is expected to see its touch solution shipments for 12.9- and 11-inch iPad Pro devices surge over 40% sequentially in the second quarter, with related iPad revenues accounting for 50% of its total revenues in the quarter, estimated the observers.

The 2020 iPad Pro is a relatively small refresh compared to the one we saw in 2018 with no changes in display technology.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.