“Retail availability of the iPhone 7 — particularly the jumbo-sized iPhone 7 Plus — remains in short supply just a week before Black Friday, a new survey has found, suggesting Apple is still struggling to satisfy consumer demand for its latest-generation handset,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray polled 134 U.S. Apple stores and found that just 47 percent of iPhone 7 models were in stock. While the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 has 91 percent availability, just 3 percent of 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus models were available in stores,” Hughes reports. “Supplies are even more constrained in China, where iPhone availability is just 16 percent — a slight improvement from 12 percent a month ago. There, Piper Jaffray has been tracking online stock from carrier China Unicom.”
“In contrast, by this point a year ago, the iPhone 6s had reached 100 percent availability at Apple’s retail stores,” Hughes reports. “As a result, Munster believes it is now unlikely that Apple will reach supply-demand equilibrium by the end of the December quarter, which includes the lucrative holiday shopping season.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, at least it’s nice to be able to sell as many iPhones as you can make. It’d be even better if Apple had enough product on hand to be able to sell as many as they possibly could, but that simply doesn’t seem to be within Apple’s capabilities. The company is almost always woefully underprepared at launch (see all iPhones, almost every iPad, Apple Pencils, AirPods, etc., etc., etc.). Yes, Apple rarely has inventory problems, but the cost of leaving sales on the table is the great unknown.
Think of sales in carrier stores, Best Buy, etc. How many average smartphone buyers would have purchased and iPhone 7/Plus if they’d been in stock, so they could have the product in hand immediately, but instead settled for a Samsung (explosive choice) or some other fragmandroid iPhone knockoff instead? Yes, those of us in the know will wait for real iPhones. The average Joe and Jane, who are the majority of smartphone buyers, most certainly will not.
Android phone assemblers must love Apple’s “Operations Genius.” That’s likely how they generate a good number of sales.
Apple is like OPEC. Prop up profits by constraining supply below demand quantity. Basic economics. Smart economics. Why is this a bad thing?
Can you read?
“Well, at least it’s nice to be able to sell as many iPhones as you can make. It’d be even better if Apple had enough product on hand to be able to sell as many as they possibly could, but that simply doesn’t seem to be within Apple’s capabilities. The company is almost always woefully underprepared at launch (see all iPhones, almost every iPad, Apple Pencils, AirPods, etc., etc., etc.). Yes, Apple rarely has inventory problems, but the cost of leaving sales on the table is the great unknown.
Think of sales in carrier stores, Best Buy, etc. How many average smartphone buyers would have purchased and iPhone 7/Plus if they’d been in stock, so they could have the product in hand immediately, but instead settled for a Samsung (explosive choice) or some other fragmandroid iPhone knockoff instead? Yes, those of us in the know will wait for real iPhones. The average Joe and Jane, who are the majority of smartphone buyers, most certainly will not.
Android phone assemblers must love Apple’s “Operations Genius.” That’s likely how they generate a good number of sales.”
THIS, more than anything having to do with good product design, innovation, etc., indicates Tim Cook is not doing his job. After all, he was hired because he was a supply-chain genius. If he can’t even get that part of the business correct, he is not doing the job he was hired to do.
FWIW, I think the Jet Black iPhone design was a mistake. If everything I’ve read about it is correct, it is a manufacturing nightmare — it takes too much time and effort to produce the phone. Apple should have charged a *very* premium price for the unit (not unlike the ceramic Watch) to limit the appeal somewhat and encourage people to go with one of the other phones (and improve their ASP). That is another mistake on Tim’s part (two actually, first was going with a difficult manufacturing process, second was not charging a lot extra for the difficult-to-manufacture iPhone).
Apple is building to the “sweet spot.” Additional manufacturing capability would lie fallow most of the year and the only difference are Buyers too impatient to wait for the best.
Sheesh MDN…that’s about the most uninformed take possible and a cert to encourage the entitlement crybabies who couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery ..see above..
Why not explain the hundreds of factors at play when planning production instead of whingeing like a schoolkid who doesn’t understand the basics of production management in an fluid and unquantifiable market.
You get the best price and consistency when supply is constrained i.e. The assemblers want to have full employment for the year, not just three months of the year. The iPhone has tens of thousands of suppliers, each with their problems and capabilities.
In an ideal world, production NEVER catches up to demand.
In an ideal world, production = demand
Also, they could not forsee the samsung debacle, which certainly did contribute to constrained supply this time
Yup, exactly. Not even a supply-chain genius could have predicted an explosion of extra sales firing up so spectacularly thanks to noted competitive devices bombing in today’s market.
The iPhone 7/7 Plus have a 15.24% usage according to Mixpanel as of Thursday, November 17. Multiply that by an estimated base of 465M and the total number of 7/7 Plus iPhones sold equals 70,866,000. Subtract 17,595,000 sold in the last quarter and the amount activated in the December quarter equals around 53,271,000. I’m assuming there will be around 15M older iPhones sold in the quarter. So, with 37 days left in the quarter Apple has sold equivalent to 68,271,000 iPhones. Last year Apple sold around 75M iPhones in the December quarter.
During the last 10 days, an average of 730K iPhone 7/7 Plus units have been activated per day. If Apple averages 452K a day until the end of the December quarter then the total number of phones activated in the December quarter will be around 85M. This is 10M more than last year. If Apple averages 722K per day for the next 37 days then the number activated will be around 95M. This is 20M more than last year.
It should be noted that last year Apple averaged around 619K activations for the iPhone 6s/6s Plus models per day for the last 30 days of the December 2015 quarter. This was actually about 65K higher per day than the previous number of days that year. One reason for this increase could be purchases for the holidays. It will be interesting to see if this year’s holidays also result in an increase, especially if the Plus model is constrained.
These numbers are very encouraging, but I stopped into Best Buy for the first time in a long time and noticed a few discouraging things. First, two Samsung Galaxy S7 phones were sold in the time I was there (about 15 minutes). I didn’t witness any iPhone sales. The second troubling aspect of this visit: There were NO reps in the Apple section.
On a brighter note, I did have a chance to interacted with the new MacBook Pro, and I’m blown away. The machine is a work of art. My current computer is the late 2015 MacBook Pro and this new MacBook Pro is far superior. The screen looks amazing, the touch bar is seamless, the keys on the keyboard are much easier to use, it’s thinner and weighs less. They really hit a grand slam. Bravo.
We, my wife and I got our 7+ phones about two weeks before the date of delivery given to us by Verizon Wireless when we ordered the phones. Very Happy with beta version of portrait app. It will take a little time to get used too though.
This is the year I’m supposed to upgrade and upgrade the wife’s at xmas, you can count two lost sales right here, no headphone jack, a home button that sucks in colder climates, having double click every single thing in iOS 10, and the price. I’ve already passed, and I’ll be passing at xmas for the first time in I don’t know how many years. Oh yay, a giant Taptic Engine, woopidy doo!