It wouldn't surprise me, but in that case competitors have no one but themselves to blame. They've known a retina iPad was coming since June 2010, so they should have booked capacity then.
Apple's procurement is far beyond "booking capacity". They effectively provide the economy-of-scale for something like an iPad retina display to be economically produced in the first place. No one else has that kind of power.
So you're saying Apple can order millions of retinas from Samsung, but Samsung cannot order millions from themselves? Like I said, if they're not willing to take the financial risk (as HP did with the TouchPad, for example) then they deserve what they get.
It goes something like this--Samsung can't ship enough units by itself to justify setting up production, but Apple can. So Apple preorders an entire production run, and since Apple's already spoken for all the displays they can produce, Samsung doesn't get any.
Samsung could take the risk, but then they'd have an entire production run of Samsung tablets that no one wants to buy and they will have wasted their entire capital investment.
Because that's what happened. They've bought up all the current stock afaik. The other tablet makers will be behind the curve by at least 6 months, maybe a year.
