“Shoppers looking to buy Apple Inc.’s new iPhone 7 smartphones on Friday better have ordered ahead,” Alex Webb and Mark Gurman report for Bloomberg. “Brisk demand left some stores sold out, leaving those who purchased online with the best chance to get their hands on the latest models — and some resorting to extreme measures.”
“Apple made several changes to its flagship product — the new iPhones feature camera upgrades, a faster processor, longer battery life and a new water and dust-resistant design. But their size and shape aren’t that different from the iPhone 6 line, apart from one key change: the removal of the headphone jack,” Webb and Gurman report. “That doesn’t seem to have deterred customers showing up on Friday on the first day of sales.”
“The challenge for Apple now, as in years past, is making sure there are enough of the gadgets to meet demand. Customers who hadn’t pre-ordered the larger iPhone 7 Plus models will be unable to buy them in Apple stores Friday, the company said earlier this week,” Webb and Gurman report. “That’s already leading to black-market tactics. Men outside the Convent Garden store were seen exchanging wads of cash to buy handsets from somebody who had ordered ahead.”
“T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp. said this week that pre-orders for the new models were almost four times as great as for previous models, helping drive Apple stock to its highest level in almost five years,” Webb and Gurman report. “Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, said Apple could sell 75 million to 76 million iPhones in the December quarter, which would be year-over-year growth, but supply constraints could prevent that.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ignoring the iPad 2 fiasco, nobody can ramp up like Apple, especially in a crucial holiday quarter.
No one can ramp up like Apple, “you’ll have your iMacs by Christmas!” Limited supply of iPhones, 3-5 weeks on watches, Apple is starting to look like Nintendo!
So is your solution to set up a lot of additional production lines that will sit idle after the initial rush, or to start production months earlier, put the devices in warehouses that will sit empty after the initial rush, and hope that nothing happens that requires retrofitting or scrapping the stored devices? Neither approach would guarantee that the supply of unexpectedly popular models would meet demand.
Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook to set up a Just in Time supply chain for a reason. Looking at Apple’s market cap, there may be nearly a trillion reasons.
I kept trying the T-Mobile website at 3am ET but it was totally crashed. Around 3:10 I called T-Mobile to be greeted by a fast-talking helper speaking over an absolute background roar in the call area behind her. At the end of the call she confirmed by order and it wasn’t what I’d said so she very nicely and quickly fixed it. I probably hung up around 3:20. And just like that my order was already too late to get the initial shipment. Mine is supposed to arrive by sometime late next week.
I think it’s photos that has people geeked about this phone. I have a 4-year old at home. I look back at photos and I think, “I can never go back to those days — this image is all I’ve got.” So I want the pics to be first rate, top notch, the absolute best they can possibly be. For that reason alone I’m in on the 7Plus.
Honestly, most people use cases, right? So how important is a whole new body design? Not super duper important. Until the body design actually contributes to the functionality of the device it won’t be the key selling point.
(That said, I did opt for jet black 🙂
Just wondering how you were able to find out when you might expect delivery via T-Mobile? All I see is that my order is being processed.
It’s a fakeout by Apple.
Of course supplies are tight. They want it to be tight to whip up the feeding frenzy. Any marketing student in high school can figure that out.
Umm, no. Supplies are tight because… supplies are ALWAYS tight at first when initial demand is HUGE. Don’t be so disingenuously dumb. Look at the history for criminy’s sake.
No, he does have a point. One would think, “gee, after how many release years and we’re always tight, golly gee wiz, maybe we should adjust our launching efforts here.”
No he doesn’t, not in the least. Improvements and tooling are made up to the last minute and then manufacturing begins. To keep up with initial surge of demand they would have to start manufacturing like 6 months before a release, which cuts into R&D and PQ verification time.
Or perhaps you would like happen to Apple what just happened to SamSplode which is a cautionary tale about vetting device quality without rushing for a foolish release date if there ever was one.
Agreeing with that guy just makes you another specious conspiracy theorist when no conspiracy is to be had, much as the anti-Apple crowd devoutly wishes it to be so.
Yes he does. Get over it. I am not anti apple. I probably have more apple products than you could ever wish for. Suck it.
No he doesn’t – at all. It’s specious nonsense with no validity. Doubtful you own more Apple products than I but interesting you rather childishly want to make it an Apple possession pissing match as if the winner makes them right??? Oh brother. That kind of “impeccable” logic is laughable. Once again if Apple could manufacture enough to appease the tremendous initial surge of demand they would. Constrained availability has always been a problem for new devices just put on the market where there is high demand – where have YOU been? If you own a lot of high demand Apple products you should already be well aware of this.
It servers no purpose to drive up fake demand. If they had the phones they would be sold already. This mind game is all yours.
Supplies ARE tight. Initial demand for the phone is in excess of 10 million phones. Ramping up production to meet this initial demand is difficult – especially considering the different colors and memory configurations. Your understanding of manufacturing is apparently based on the Keebler Elves who can make billions of Toll House cookies in a tree trunk.
Claiming it is simply Apple’s ‘marketing’ is pure excrement of the bovine variety.
In contrast to demand for the iPhone 7 series, demand for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was less ‘explosive’. Per the recall information from Samsung, about 2 million Note 7’s were sold worldwide in the almost 2 months it’s been on sale. Far less than the PRE-ORDERs alone for the iPhone 7 series.
It seems the original numbers cited were 2.5 million Notes, but then that shrunk to 1 million Notes needing to be returned.
Could it be that 1.5 million of the unaccounted for devices were sitting in some carrier’s warehouse, with the discrepancy due to the old ‘shipped not sold’ scam?
Suddenly the disingenuous “undesirable and no innovation” expectations of iPhone 7 have flipped and now there’s suddenly rabid demand by the pampered impatienati when the new iPhone has been positively reviewed, looks fantastic and SamSplode has imploded by their own incompetence.
Since when is the difficulty of instantly procuring a new iPhone as soon as they come out ever been any different? Call me when a headline finally acknowledges this factoid. I can’t order until Nov. 5th and will consider myself blessed to get one sometime before Christmas. Meanwhile iPhone 6 Plus still works great!