“Despite being featured heavily within Apple’s annual ‘Christmas Gift Ideas’ guide, to the horror of last-minute holiday shoppers Apple appears to [have] sold out of stock of AirPods in numerous countries around the world, with the company quoting early January as the next available date for deliveries,” Tom Sykes reports for The Apple Post.
“While stock may vary at Apple’s brick and mortar retail stores,” Sykes reports, “it’s likely stores are selling the last available stock in Apple’s inventory, with third-party retailers world-wide also marking the wireless accessories as unavailable.”
Sykes reports, “The sellout could be a sign that Apple is readying their updated AirPods charging case that was announced in September.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Apple will over-perform on AirPods delivery estimates as they did with iPhone X.
SEE ALSO:
Under ‘operations genius’ Tim Cook, product delays and other problems are no longer unusual for Apple – November 20, 2017
Apple delays HomePod release to early 2018 – November 17, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook: The ‘operations genius’ who never has enough products to sell at launch – October 23, 2017
Apple reveals HomePod smart home music speaker – June 5, 2017
Apple is misplaying the hand Steve Jobs left them – November 30, 2016
Apple delays AirPod rollout – October 26, 2016
Apple delays release of watchOS 2 due to bug – September 16, 2015
Apple delays HomeKit launch until autumn – May 14, 2015
Apple delays production of 12.9-inch ‘iPad Pro’ in face of overwhelming iPhone 6/Plus demand – October 9, 2014
Tim Cook’s mea culpa: iMac launch should have been postponed – April 24, 2013
Too bad for those expecting AirPods for the holidays. Maybe it was something that was unavoidable, such as a component shortage. Also, there were always people complaining about how those Chinese factories employees have to work such long hours. If employee hours are cut back then production drops and consumers will just have to wait a bit longer. I still think it must be rather difficult for Apple to anticipate 100% accurate demand no matter what the reason.
High demand for a product still seems to be a good situation that any company would be happy to have. I’d hardly think it’s something analysts and investors should be moaning about as long as demand is beyond expectations. The news media acts as though Apple is the only company to ever have shortages or delays in the supply chain. Those things never seem to significantly harm Tesla’s investor appeal or share value.
My wife couldn’t get them for me for Christmas last year, and I thought for sure they’d be available this year. But once again a no show from Apple. She was going to order them anyway and I said no, just get me a new camera tripod instead. In the back of my mind I was thinking about the new version, so I’ll just wait.
Good job, Tim.