Apple’s iPad is still in high demand, and to keep up with brisk sales for the holiday season (and beyond), manufacturing partner Foxconn has added new manufacturing plants in Chengdu, China capable of producing 10,000 more iPads every day.
AppleInsider is reporting that Cupertino’s favorite manufacturing partner, Foxconn, has added new production plants to their arsenal to make an extra 10,000 iPads per day (roughly 300,000 per month). According to Taiwanese tech publication Digitimes, Foxconn Electronics opened the new plants in Chengdu, China and began shipping iPads from the site this month.
Foxconn, which is the trade name for parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry, doesn’t plan to stop with 10,000 iPads per day: AppleInsider notes “production capacity is only expected to grow over time,” with plans to make the new Chengdu plants “a major supply base” by the first quarter of 2011.
The manufacturer has been working to move its production plants to inland China, where “labor is cheaper and land costs are reduced,” but the plan is being met with resistance from some Foxconn workers. Only last week, employees at the Foshan, China plant were protesting the company’s push inland.
Foxconn’s new Chengdu factories will eventually have about 50 iPad production lines and at maximum capacity, will be able to produce a whopping 40 million iPads per year. The current iPad production plant in Shenzhen can handle up to 2.5 million units each month, and shipments of the tablet device are expected to top seven million -- bringing the 2010 total sales to 15 million, according to unnamed sources.
Of course, this is just the current iPad we’re talking about -- with Apple expected to launch a second-generation iPad in the first quarter of 2011, you can bet the number of units sold will continue to climb ever higher.
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(Image courtesy of MacRumors)
