[prw2732]

Last Friday, July 18th, I went to an AT&T store, signed up for a Family Plan, got 3 other phone and ordered a 16GB WHITE iPhone. On Monday, July 21st, I went back to the AT&T Store and picked up my iPhone. I selected WHITE on purpose, avoiding the higher demand iPhones.

[kill953]

warlock7 said:

Let's also be clear about the history set by the first iPhone. It took around 74 days to achieve a million units.

Which was only for sale in one country with a provider with a less than stellar reputation (and also at much too high an initial cost).

Face facts, this is nothing short of another debacle, along with MobileMe. The rate that things are going, I am going to have to be issued with another PAC* by my current supplierbefore I even get a sniff of an iPhone - they last a month before expiring, and if I am still waiting to get an iPhone after a month, it'll be my interest in buying one that has expired first.

* For those who don't know, its a code that allows me to transfer my present phone number when I move suppliers here in the UK.

[djwright]

warlock7 said:

It took somewhere around 74 days to reach a million units in sales with the first one. Why would you guess that they should predict that same quantity sold in a day?

Well, it was closer to three days than one, but anyway.. what I am wondering is does 1 million sales mean 1 million phones in people's hands, or 1 million people who have either received one or have one on order? If it's one million in people's hands, that means they did have an idea of the 3G's initial popularity (but not so good after then...)

Regardless, having sold in the first three days what took 74 days last year, I haven't heard of them cracking the next million in sales in the following 12 days ;)

And what people are finding frustrating IMO is not so much the limited availability, but the randomness of supply, and lack of information about when supplies may be coming through - in Australia at least, Apple is doing its best to keep everyone completely in the dark about what stock, if any, is coming through or when it will. Having an approximate timeframe would be better than "we don't know when we'll get stock, or what it will be when we do"
(it also appears Apple also failed to make the right guesses on model mix - 16GB in black is almost impossible to find - and when stock comes in, it seems to be a disproportionate amount of 8GB models)

[moose_n_squirrel]

pistogrih said:

"This is a factor of overwhelming demand."
I don't buy that either. I would suggest that Apple deliberately caused a shortage, thereby increasing column inches about the 'out-of-stock' iPhone, increasing its appeal and predictably, creating the "must have" of summer 2008.

Wow, brilliant. What is the purpose of that, financially? Apple creates a must-have device that they cannot receive revenue from because there aren't any to sell.

No, I do buy the "demand" line. Listen. The other day AT&T claimed that sales were double that of the first iPhone. Suppose you're in a meeting at Apple 6 months ago and you look at all the numbers and you make your expert educated guess and you sign all the production contracts. And let's go even further and suppose you went and asked a few Mac forum posters for their opinion. You want to know what opinion was on another Mac forum before the launch? "No, it won't be like the first iPhone. It was a novelty then, it isn't a new product now, there won't be lines this time." People actually thought this before the 3G launch.

So then you take your expert forecasts and maybe your advice from forum posters and set your plans in motion. And then at the launch there are so many people in line you can't believe it. What do you do now? Ramp up production! But wait...

Is factory capacity available in China? What if you already maxed it out? What if some production lines added for the launch are now assigned to LG's new phone or Samsung's new TV and you can't get it back?
Is every single iPhone component available? Can your chip and display suppliers ramp up with you, or is there a bottleneck?
etc. etc.

If a product is selling out far faster than anticipated by all major parties including the customers themselves, I don't think Apple can be blamed so much.

[rlockhart]

Keep in mind that this type of manufactured shortage (no pun intended) is being used by Wii right now. There is no reason to believe that Apple isn't doing the same. Obviously, all of this is conjecture, and you could be dead on that they just got it wrong. But if that's true, why not communicate with your existing and potential customers in a more contrite manner. Tim Cook stating that he's delighted with the way things are going is what's sending the message that this shortage is more intentional than accidential.

[jmincey]

The only reason for artificially engineering a product shortage is to drive up the price. But if the price is to remain static regardless, (as is the case with the iPhone), then artificial product shortages are utterly pointless.



Jeff Mincey

[pistogrih]

Obviously I understand the basic tenets of business, and I was being a little flippant before, but the sheer scale of the shortages suggests deliberate action to make sure that the mobile phone shops are out of stock. I personally can't get an iPhone as I'm stuck in a contract until next year, but walking past the Carphone Warehouse/O2 stores in the UK, I can't help feeling that the huge posters with a picture of the iPhone and the message "Sorry, no iPhones" (or words to that effect) are another extension of their marketing campaign. As are the photos of people queueing outside their stores, or the stories about how iPhones are trading for thousands of dollars on eBay. Now most of us right-thinking individuals know that this is ridiculous, we can wait a couple of weeks, but it follows a similar pattern to the last iPhone, and most new product launches.



If a company is so confident in their product, that they roll it out in 20 countries at once, at least overcompensate a little on stock orders. If it's so important to make sure you grab customers in case they don't come back, is it going to hurt to have a few left on the shelves?



I'm not a businessman nor a market analyst, but I see this happening more and more with major product launches (PS3, Wii, iPhone) they all seem to have something in common, and thats huge multinational companies that don't seem to be able to gauge demand for their newest, and massively hyped, products.



And yes, I have different coloured tin-foil hats for different outfits.

[moose_n_squirrel]

I just don't see how a fake shortage can make any sense. It's hard enough to gauge actual demand, and on top of that you want to supply a specific number below that? There are so many planning variables involved that adding a fake shortage into the formula seems like a high school game that a real manager wouldn't want to play. It's also a dangerous game, because publicly traded companies like Apple send very specific messages to the stock market, and if you screw up your fake shortage, the fact that you were not able to sell what you intentionally didn't have could anger shareholders, who would much prefer that you get the profit growth that's expected. You do not grow profits when you do not sell the units. The SEC might not like such manipulation, either.

Another reason a fake shortage would be a dangerous game is that the shelf life of tech devices is very short. You want to sell anything you can as early as you can, because in a year or less, the next model needs to come out and people will start holding back for it. If you fake shortage the first month of a product that has the life of a year, then you killed 8% of your 12-month sales window.

And by the way, I did a quick Google on this alleged "fake Wii shortage" and found just as many article saying it wasn't fake.

How about the marketing angle, then? Well, I was thinking about getting my first iPhone and didn't want to stand in the first day line, and the shortage, whether it's fake or not, isn't exactly making me more excited or positive about the iPhone, just frustrated. All I need is a new phone and I thought maybe it was time to jump to the iPhone, but between the plan cost, the fact that Web, GPS and apps are not requirements for me, and the inability to get one, I am actually thinking about a different phone that would also be much cheaper to obtain and operate, and which I could use now. If Apple had no long iPhone line the last two times I drove by the Apple Store, I probably would have one by now, Apple would have gotten my money, and I would not be considering a different phone. So in my anecdotal case, the shortage may cost Apple a sale.

[warlock7]

How many countries has the 3G launched in? 22. So, since it's released in 22 countries they should have seen an decrease in the number of days to match the previous launch. They certainly didn't seel through the stock 22 times as fast as they did with the last one, no it was much faster than that. You're making large assumptions without applying any reasoning to it. But why would I expect reason from somebody whining about not being able to get one.



What carrier did they use in the US this time? AT&T again, sam company. Better coverage than any other in the US.



No debacle, just whiny people expecting more than they should.

[tatilsever]

Let's say you correctly predict that there will be five million people demaning your new phone or game console the moment it launches. Do you wait until you buy and pay for the parts, manufacturing and transportation of all five million and sit on that vast expense for months without any income or do you introduce the product once you have the first million ready and just face some random accusations of "manufactured shortage"?

[kurrodu]

No company wants to keep their loyal customers waiting in lines. The last iphone took them 75 days to reach a million mark.
The company might have been prepared for 1 million in 30 days this time. But due to the over whelming demand, they sold out 1 million in just 4 days. the company cant accurately really predict the demand. (And keep in mind that this is a premium segment phone).

They are trying to do the best they can !.

[Skripo]

It amazes me how analysts will slam Apple for anything. It seems that the Nintendo WII situation has been a classic example of driving demand by limiting availability yet analysts think that is good.
The whole Apple out of stock story is also pure horse pucks. In the span of 2 days we have wildly hyped stories of Apple being out of stock but a day later we see this:
http://www.topmuffin...ne-availability
which shows that there is excellent availability of all models at all stores as of today. Apple scares a lot of people and they will never give them a fair shake.
At least the people who matter, the Apple retail customer, is the only one that counts.

[moose_n_squirrel]

Skripo said:

The whole Apple out of stock story is also pure horse pucks. In the span of 2 days we have wildly hyped stories of Apple being out of stock but a day later we see this:
http://www.topmuffin...ne-availability

The hype may be consistent with the actual reports. In recent days the availability was actually very limited, the availability for yesterday was all out of stock across the nation exactly as reported), and today is all green. So when they said it was unavailable, it really was. This could easily be consistent with arrival intervals of container ships from China.

(The following are assumptions and I'm making up numbers here) These devices are not arriving in a continuous stream through some pipeline from California, they typically come in huge batches on container ships crossing the Pacific, which takes days. If Apple scheduled a forecast four-day supply to arrive on one ship, and it runs out before the next ship comes in four days later, supplies will completely empty because the next ship hasn't completely crossed the Pacific and cannot accelerate enough to make much difference. When the next shipment comes in, it floods the stores and the US supply goes green. But could go red again if the parade of shipments can't keep up. Maybe Apple is going to the great expense of air freighting them too since they have in the past, but there are probably limits to that too, not even considering possiblie limits to actual production capacity.

[rtavis]

(laughing...) Well, it's no surprise that the domain Apple selected for it's MobileMe transition is me.com!

I only have one beef about this whole process of getting an iPhone (and I'm still waiting, btw...) - when I sauntered over to the Apple store last weekend, (no, I don't 'stand in line' for restaurants or to puchase tech gear) as expected I found the 'sold out' sign at the door. So I'm chatting with the greeter, and I ask him, "well, is it possible to pre-order a phone?" "No. First come, first serve." "OK, well, is there any indication when you might have the item in stock again?'

And here comes my beef - I get the stock answer, "No. Apple never tells us anything."

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that while in an Apple store. Now, let me put in here that shopping at an Apple store is generally great - the clerks are friendly, efficient, and well informed about the products they sell. But you always reach a point about new stuff where you get this 'Apple never tells us anything' line. OK. That's fine for some level of corporate culture, but it is extremely frustrating for the consumers. I didn't come into the store just to look around. I like information before I buy a new product, expecially one that is just out of the gate.



So the following day, I go to an AT&T store. I walk in. A clerk approuches me, asks if he can help me, I say, "well, an iPhone would be nice". His response - "Sorry, we're out of stock right now due to the high demand, but if you'd like to prepay one on a credit card we can get one for you in a couple weeks. We'll call you and email you when it comes in, you won't have to make another trip or wait in line."

Sold.