iPad sales performance is expected to continue to dwindle. (Photo : Getty Images)
Due to falling iPad sales, Taiwan-based Coretronic Corp. has shut down one of its mainland factories that manufacture panels for U.S. tech powerhouse Apple Inc.
According to a National Business Daily report on Tuesday, the plant located in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, has halted its operations and has filed applications to liquidate its assets.
The factory, which has over 1,500 employees, manufactures liquid crystal backlight modules for iPads. When at peak, it produced around one million units a month.
Coretronic (Nanjing) Co. Ltd. set up the plant in 2005.
The report stated that after manufacturing the last batch of products earlier this October, the factory released no orders to process. The liquidation is expected to end before 2016.
An official from the plant's human resources department confirmed the news, but details as to whether workers will be laid off were not yet disclosed.
Coretronic, one of the top three panel manufacturers in the world, was not immediately available for comment.
In recent data from research outfit International Data Corporation, iPad sales have seen a drastic drop of 17.9 percent to 10 million units. The decline was the sixth for Apple's tablet business.
This poor performance of iPads is expected to continue in the forthcoming quarters, Gene Cao, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc., stated.
"When Apple released bigger-screen smartphones such as iPhone Plus, it was fully aware of the possible encroachment on iPads. After all, when handsets with large screens are good enough to meet consumer demand for entertainment, why would they need a tablet?" Cao pointed out.
