Evidently, you missed the news on page one that Sharp had caught up and was on track with production.
Plot evaporates.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple 'Blown Away' by iPhone 5 Pre-Orders
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Evidently, you missed the news on page one that Sharp had caught up and was on track with production.
Plot evaporates.
Again, they will sell out no matter. Launch day and launch week is going to see the biggest burst with demand levelling off in the rest of the quarter. There is nothing to lose in controlling the initial burst knowing full well you'll sell out all the units first quarter.
They won't end up with extra inventory first quarter. It doesn't matter if they "hold back" a bit for a few days, they'll still sell those units the following week.
You couldn't be more wrong. Most Fortune 500 companies use JIT and Lean Manufacturing principles. It's a big part of why they became Fortune 500 companies.
You seem to know me better than I know myself. Can you please quote me where I have ever claimed the iPhone would fail sales wise ?
Its apple. Not the product quality. Honestly they could have announced a new iphone and gave nothing but rumours (possibly a few pictures and said things like "twice the speed" and it would still sell extremely well).
Many people, never having touched the phone or read reviews about it would still buy the phone. Not because of how good it inherently is but because ITS MADE BY APPLE AND THATS MAGICAL!!
The hype over this product is unbelievable. Its not a solution to global hunger or clean energy. Its a PHONE.
I don't have a problem buying a product because its a good product. I have a problem with people buying a product for the sake of it being a product. How many will buy the iphone 5 simply because it is a new iphone and not because they will actually need it (and then its compared to Samsung who's phone are bought on a much larger basis because its the best tool for the job). What im trying to say is that these numbers do not definitively prove that the iphone 5 is the best phone on the planet. If people choose product A over product B simply because it is labeled "A" that does not necessarily better than B.
And I love apple's marketing BS. twice the speed is true. But the 4S uses a 800 MHZ processor. Considering any high end phone uses a 1.5 GHZ dual core (on a newer architecture). Anything less than half the speed would be disappointing.
There still hasn't been a full hands on review and people are still buying the things.
Last edited:
I addressed that in my response and will VERY happily return to discuss them with you as soon as they available... why? Because I am confident in my conclusions.
What is this "liked" business? I don't care one way or another how they do.
But, to your question... I expected to have trouble getting through, long load times, etc. I'm personally glad I had an easy checkout, but it didn't jive with any sense of a crazy overwhelming demand.
I suspect there people was a record demand, but I think what some of us here take issue with is believing PR people. Their job is to manipulate.
It's like trusting the CIA or Pentagon to be honest. Their job is to lie, just like marketers.
Last edited:
Sure, it was all planned. I don't buy it. Tim Cook said on the analyst call last January that the only thing holding back iPhone 4S sales was supply. Maybe in Quebec iPhones were plentiful, but that wasn't the case in New York (not even the suburban stores and certainly nothing in Manhattan).
Why is it so hard to accept that? Shortages in the Steve Jobs era were partly because of his obsession with minor details and how he'd make changes right up until launch date. Tim Cook wants there to be a ready supply. There were lines around the block when the iPad 2 came out. They sold 2 million the first week. There weren't lines around the block when the new iPad came out. They sold 4 million the first week.
yawnz, another one of those out of the thin air
to be frank, you didn't address anything important.
The fact that you are all so compelled to mention Samsung, despite the news item having nothing to do with Samsung, proves that they are worthy competition.
Do tell.
Here are the salient numbers: they sold out in one hour.
The key figure in that is "one".
Enough numbers for you?
awwwww...please grow up like the rest of us apple fans do
or...you can cry mommy *sob sob*
You think they ship from their Apple stores to customers to who order online delivery? No of course not... Apple did an excellent job of balancing online direct deliveries against having enough supply in Apple stores.\
It sets a far better impression on a would be customer to have walk-in traffic be able to grab a newly released device and not turned away empty handed. Those ordering online are more likely to have already made the decision to purchase and of course are more likely to accept having to wait since they already decided that getting it shipped was good enough.
...so of course Apple is going to favor ensuring stores had sufficient stock on launch days and the days following... and even after doing that with the iPhone 4S they still had lack of stock in many store locations consistently for weeks.
The only issue here is whether or not they intentionally held back product that was ready to sell just to make a "hot spot" on the nightly news. I guess we should all believe that Apple had an infinite supply of iPhone 5's available and no matter what, they should have been able to accurately gauge their sales and produce enough in advance to meet demand. But instead, they turned away millions in possible profit to make a point.. do you seriously believe what you are saying? I'm not saying such a practice is never done, of course it is. But there is a MAJOR difference between holding back some stock vs turning away millions of dollars in potential sales while the product is still very much on everyone's lips.
Take note: According to TechCrunch, the iPhone 5 sold out TWENTY times faster than the iPhone 4 or 4S. Did you also predict that would happen and Apple was faulty in not predicting this?
Companies always hold back new features for later releases, that's nothing new. Nor is it new that people pay premium for Apple products... not sure what your point is with either of these statements in a thread about supply and demand.
Last edited:
Apple is actually better than most in this regard. They are releasing iOS 6 for the 3GS even though it was discontinued on Wednesday. Sure it doesn't have everything, but look how many Android users complain that they haven't even gotten Ice Cream Sandwich yet, much less Jelly Bean, on phones sold in 2012.
I like the naive people who really know nothing about contract manufacturing, assuming that Apple and their manufacturing partners could make as many phones as they wanted in advance, if they just wanted to, and any supply constraints are artificial in order to "drive demand."
Why is this idiotic?
1) We all know the iPhone will be in demand no matter what, nobody has to do anything to make it any greater. It is probably the single most in demand consumer product ever, in the history of the Earth.
2) Production of every single iPhone is limited to the single component that has the longest production bottleneck associated with it. The iPhone is hundreds of parts. Processors, housings, screen, screws, connectors, battery, radio antennas, etc. etc. etc. If any single ONE of those hundreds of parts is constrained, the phone cannot be finalized.
3) Complex silicon and next-generation LCD panels (like the one in the new iPhone, with embedded touch layer, and significantly better color saturation and gamut) are probably some of the main constrained items. The factories that produce these parts cost literally BILLIONS of dollars PER FACTORY. You can't just build 10 of them, in order to satisfy demand for a product int he first few weeks of its release. You have to balance the number of production lines in order to maximize production at the beginning of the high-demand cycle, but not leave you with too much excess inventory once demand begins to wane.
4) Tim Cook is universally recognized as one of the greatest logistics managers when it comes to supply chain management in the history of private industry. If you don't think him and his team and their hundreds of part vendor and manufacturing partners don't spend thousands upon thousands of man-hours planning out EXACTLY what the ideal number of production lines to open for every last part in an iPhone, to maximize profit across the life of each generation of iPhone, from day 1 of pre-orders all the way up to the final day Apple sells each model, you are simply idiotic.
5) Devices take a certain number of time to manufacture, and many aspects of the iPhone are manufactured by hand. Time is not infinite. For hypothetical purposes, imagine it takes one second to manufacture an iPhone. Picture a never-ending conveyer belt with finished iPhones rolling off of it, and this is your supply of finalized iPhones coming off of manufacturing. We all know it takes way more than one second to manufacture an iPhone, but for our sake, let's say it's one second. That's 60 iPhones per minute being manufactured. 3600 iPhones per hour. 86,400 iPhones in a 24-hour period. 604,800 iPhones per week being manufactured, at the one per second rate. It is likely that Apple and all of their reseller/carrier partners will receive 5 million iPhone 5 orders through the end of the weekend, and something tells me this number may end up being conservative, despite being significantly more than the number of iPHone 4S units sold in the same period last year (iPhone 4S was by far the biggest iPhone seller to-date when it was launched). To have 5 Million iPhones ready to go at launch, the mythical iPhone 5 assembly line, churning out 1 iPhone 5 per second, would need to have been running in full swing for 8.25 weeks -- and that's just enough to satisfy the first 5 million orders. Any ONE part becoming unavailable shuts down the ENTIRE assembly line. Are you beginning to see why it's not "trivial" to manufacture an unlimited number of iPhones ahead of launch? Are you beginning to see how even a fairly minor mis-judgement as to demand, say being 20% off, could lead to WEEKS of additional manufacturing time being required in order to meet demand? Are you starting to see why this is tough? Are you starting to see why Apple should probably get more credit for being better at ALL of this stuff than ANY OTHER CONSUMER ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURER IN HISTORY?
No?
You're an idiot.
Why is this idiotic?
1) We all know the iPhone will be in demand no matter what, nobody has to do anything to make it any greater. It is probably the single most in demand consumer product ever, in the history of the Earth.
2) Production of every single iPhone is limited to the single component that has the longest production bottleneck associated with it. The iPhone is hundreds of parts. Processors, housings, screen, screws, connectors, battery, radio antennas, etc. etc. etc. If any single ONE of those hundreds of parts is constrained, the phone cannot be finalized.
3) Complex silicon and next-generation LCD panels (like the one in the new iPhone, with embedded touch layer, and significantly better color saturation and gamut) are probably some of the main constrained items. The factories that produce these parts cost literally BILLIONS of dollars PER FACTORY. You can't just build 10 of them, in order to satisfy demand for a product int he first few weeks of its release. You have to balance the number of production lines in order to maximize production at the beginning of the high-demand cycle, but not leave you with too much excess inventory once demand begins to wane.
4) Tim Cook is universally recognized as one of the greatest logistics managers when it comes to supply chain management in the history of private industry. If you don't think him and his team and their hundreds of part vendor and manufacturing partners don't spend thousands upon thousands of man-hours planning out EXACTLY what the ideal number of production lines to open for every last part in an iPhone, to maximize profit across the life of each generation of iPhone, from day 1 of pre-orders all the way up to the final day Apple sells each model, you are simply idiotic.
5) Devices take a certain number of time to manufacture, and many aspects of the iPhone are manufactured by hand. Time is not infinite. For hypothetical purposes, imagine it takes one second to manufacture an iPhone. Picture a never-ending conveyer belt with finished iPhones rolling off of it, and this is your supply of finalized iPhones coming off of manufacturing. We all know it takes way more than one second to manufacture an iPhone, but for our sake, let's say it's one second. That's 60 iPhones per minute being manufactured. 3600 iPhones per hour. 86,400 iPhones in a 24-hour period. 604,800 iPhones per week being manufactured, at the one per second rate. It is likely that Apple and all of their reseller/carrier partners will receive 5 million iPhone 5 orders through the end of the weekend, and something tells me this number may end up being conservative, despite being significantly more than the number of iPHone 4S units sold in the same period last year (iPhone 4S was by far the biggest iPhone seller to-date when it was launched). To have 5 Million iPhones ready to go at launch, the mythical iPhone 5 assembly line, churning out 1 iPhone 5 per second, would need to have been running in full swing for 8.25 weeks -- and that's just enough to satisfy the first 5 million orders. Any ONE part becoming unavailable shuts down the ENTIRE assembly line. Are you beginning to see why it's not "trivial" to manufacture an unlimited number of iPhones ahead of launch? Are you beginning to see how even a fairly minor mis-judgement as to demand, say being 20% off, could lead to WEEKS of additional manufacturing time being required in order to meet demand? Are you starting to see why this is tough? Are you starting to see why Apple should probably get more credit for being better at ALL of this stuff than ANY OTHER CONSUMER ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURER IN HISTORY?
No?
You're an idiot.
In what way does holding back stock help apple? sure, it may "create hype," but in the long run, it keeps iPhones out of customers hands. (and most importantly, their money still in their pockets.) Why must 'nay-sayers' always doubt that a popular product can actually sell units without creating conspiracy theories?
When it comes down to it, the average customer will see a shiny new iPhone and want to buy it asap. that combined with the apple store app working almost flawlessly and apple's website not crashing as much as last year, i can see the possibility that they might be selling iPhones faster than expected.
just my opinion though.
When it comes down to it, the average customer will see a shiny new iPhone and want to buy it asap. that combined with the apple store app working almost flawlessly and apple's website not crashing as much as last year, i can see the possibility that they might be selling iPhones faster than expected.
just my opinion though.
And how many months of production to finally catch up with demand?
Sounds like people think they should stockpile for 8+ months before releasing it just so they can meet initial demand.
In Quebec, iPhones weren't plentiful. There was a huge line-up on Saint-Catherines street in Montreal with quite a few Vermonters/New Yorkers coming in to purchase unlocked phones. Same in Laval for the other Apple store. Not everyone got a handset.
All carrier locations on the island of Montreal/Laval were sold out. Yet out in the suburbs, if you travelled a bit, plenty of stock.
Was there a LCN/RDI van in Granby ? Of course not. But there was one on Saint-Catherines in Montreal ? Sure. Late night news ? "OMFG iPhone IS SOLD OUT CRAZY!" at the same time my GF was picking up her 32 GB model from an empty store.
Because it's like that everytime. Ever heard of the little story about the boy who cried wolf ?
It might be because the factories in China simply can't produce them quickly enough, but I don't know. If so, Apple doesn't have any real reason to increase their production capacity since the iPhone being sold out makes it seem like everyone is buying one.
Apple is like a crazy religion, or political party now... they just pump out nonsensical spin and everyone laps it up without any fact checking.
Faith should be reserved for things much greater than just a telephone.
Hell, the claim of the iPhone 5 being the thinnest smart phone ever has already been disproved, but does it stop them from advertising that "claim"? Of course not... and do people believe them? Sure they do... because they're Apple.
Apple isn't a company, they're not concerned with profits, they're just our friends and they want us to be happy.
This is my big problem with Apple. They are so successful at manipulating people! I don't even like people to know I own an iPhone because they probably assume I've been taken in somehow. As soon as someone makes a better phone I'll jump!
Having just seen the Note 2 videos, I was disappointed at the lack of polish.
No need to hold back "for the long run". Spread out the initial burst over a week or two. Media attention gives them free PR, customers don't walk away just because they waited a week. Win/Win.