iPhone 12 Pro demand is so high Apple is taking parts from iPads to keep up

iPhone 11 Pro (Image credit: Joseph Keller / iMore)

What you need to know

Apple has been surprised by the demand for iPhone 12 Pro.
It's struggling to keep up with the manufacturing requirements.
It's pulling parts from iPad production to try and make up the shortfall.

Apple is reportedly so surprised by the level of demand for iPhone 12 Pro that it's had to repurpose parts that were supposed to be put into iPads just to keep up with manufacturing requirements.

According to a Nikkei report, demand has been considerably stronger than Apple's forecast, leaving it short of handsets for sale. As a result, it's pulling parts from iPad production to try and ramp things up a notch.

Demand for the iPhone 12 Pro has been much stronger than Apple anticipated. Making matters worse, the company has been hit by supply constraints for some components, such as power chips and lidar components used for depth-sensing imaging functions, Nikkei Asia learned. In response, Apple has reallocated some components intended for iPads to the iPhone 12 Pro, two people familiar with the matter said.

As a result, iPad production has now been impacted as well.

Apple is said to be trying to get more iPhones – of all configurations – onto shelves as quickly as possible.

To fill the empty space on shelves, Apple has asked suppliers to prepare more than 20 million units of iPhone 11, iPhone SE and iPhone XR handsets from October through the year-end for holiday shopping season and early next year. That is equivalent to more than a quarter of the orders Apple placed for the new iPhone 12 series this year, which is around 75 million to 80 million units, people who have direct knowledge of the matter told Nikkei Asia.

While stock shortages around an iPhone launch are nothing new, Apple is dealing with unprecedented issues this time around thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. That's a situation that's unlikely to change any time soon, too.

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.