Apple Cites 'Incredible' Demand for New iPhones Amid iPhone 5s Sellouts

[elvislives]

Everyone's a winner. For those that "won" a "new" 5S today ...well done.
You can now go home with it and:
Put on a plastic coloured case.
Try out the fingerprint sensor instead of taking the same time to press four screen digits
Take a few photos of your cat and furniture with the great new camera and do a few motion capture slo mo videos of the cat. And furniture.
Realise how 'fast' everything seems and comment on how snappy Safari is.
Contact the bank manager and apologise for being a bit silly and taking out that phone-loan and can yIu cancel the contract please?

For those who will have to wait:
Rejoice. You will have less time to wait until the iPhone 6 full-version comes out next year and have saved £££s by doing it. Meantime. Go out to your local Poundland. Get a good colours case. Slap it on. Download IOS 7. Go to your friends and declare "look gullible friends - my new 5S'..don't worry people can't tell the difference between the 4/S anyway. They will marvel at the snappy Safari. The sharp shots. The photo filters and the 'fingerprint scanner' ...secretly just the home button...but with the screen lock disabled.

Result, now. Go and enjoy the rest of your life. Thanks!

haha!

 

[adbe]

For those who will have to wait:
Rejoice. You will have less time to wait until the iPhone 6 full-version comes out next year and have saved £££s by doing it. Meantime. Go out to your local Poundland. Get a good colours case. Slap it on. Download IOS 7. Go to your friends and declare "look gullible friends - my new 5S'..don't worry people can't tell the difference between the 4/S anyway. They will marvel at the snappy Safari. The sharp shots. The photo filters and the 'fingerprint scanner' ...secretly just the home button...but with the screen lock disabled.

Result, now. Go and enjoy the rest of your life. Thanks!

That wasn't actually all that funny the last time you posted it either.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Apple marketing does it again, to much stock means you're not planning to your customer.

Not having enough stock makes "incredible demand" headlines, drumming up excitement for more sales.

Numbers don't lie. Apple will report actual sold-in-consumer-hands numbers (not shipped units to stores like Samsung) on Monday. You can hang on to your "marketing" myth all you want. Apple's goal is to announce as big a number on Monday as possible.

The insane thing (AKA doing something over and over expecting different results) is that every since since at least the iPhone 4 there had been a predicable cycle:

1) Posters suggest it's the last year of Apple's phone leadership based on their perception of the just announced phone.

2) Launch day stock depletion brings the "it's marketing to drum up demand crowd."

3) Apple announces actual numbers to debunk. But that never stops the cycle from continuing.

The fact is the there are enough iPhone users out there on enough update cycles that virtually guarantees each new model will sell out at launch. When an iPhone is two years old why wouldn't you upgrade when you can sell your previous one to absorb the cost maybe even have a few bucks left over?

 

[cmichaelb]

Stores got like zero stock, at least in the Boston and Northern New hampshire area. This Apple store got five AT&T models and a handful of others. Of course demand is going to outweight those pitiful numbers. I thought the Lumia 920 launch was soft... but this is ridiculous.

Boy, the little AT&T store I went to(maybe 20 people in line) had a ton of 5s models- space grey only the chagrin of this hipster in line.

A lot of 5c's as well, except for yellow.

Glad I went there instead of the Apple store near me in Leawood KS. The line was a couple of hundred people long this morning.

 

[BvizioN]

I see you missed the irony there pal. All I am pointing out is that stocks are EXTREMELY, if not TOO, limited. I'm in France. Woke up at 7am to be the first in line. Guess what: I was. However, with what did I walk out? Nothing. They had 1 16 space grey, and 2 32g ... NO SILVER, NO GOLD. Oh, and of course, they had like a hundred iPhone Cs.

Disappointed, rant: over.

No, I did not miss your irony. I think you missed my point. I hear this story of yours almost every year on every Apple product launch from unhappy customers who do not manage to get their hands on the new products on the very first day. And then when the weekend is over Apple announces record sales, over 5 millions handsets! Don't you wonder where these numbers come from?

 

[muadibe]

Managed to get a silver model through TMO for delivery on Monday.

 

[jonnysods]

Looking forward to hearing the numbers on the weekend

 

[Boatboy24]

Just walked past the Sprint Store in Reston, VA. Nobody in there - one lonely employee with a clipboard at the door, awaiting the masses...

 

[scbn]

Exactly. The typical MR member is a nerd who has no clue on what the average consumer would like or want.

Some MacRumor forum members think they know everything! I mean everything!!

 

[elvislives]

iPhone 5 users

Wonder how many people are "upgrading" from iPhone 5?
while the 5s is a nice phone, I wish Apple have given us 2 size options...
4.7" iPhone 6 it is then...

 

[carfac]

Apple has issued a brief statement citing "incredible" demand for the new devices...

I don't think "incredible" means what they think it means....

 

[tigres]

Doesn't seem that apple will break any records on the 5s; as limited supply constraints makes that a given. As for the Gold/ how do they call it unprecedented demand if they had next to nothing to begin with.

gotta love the marketing spin, be very surprised if the 5c numbers compensates for the lack of #'s on the flagship device.

 

[adbe]

I just wonder if the production of the white phone wasn't inhibited by making the gold phone. I am obviously not familiar with the manufacturing process, but since it looks like the gold phone uses some of the same parts as the white phone, it may be harder to produce enough volume off at the start for both colors.

Plausible, but more likely as claimed its the sensor that's messing with supply.

The grey is probably more easily available because marketing research told Apple that white/gold buyers are more likely to settle for grey, than vice-versa, so to ensure no units left sitting on the shelf, they maximized production on that color.

 

[WannaGoMac]

Apple marketing does it again, to much stock means you're not planning to your customer.

Not having enough stock makes "incredible demand" headlines, drumming up excitement for more sales.

Actually, just marketing does it again. ALL these corps do this, I remember the big "rush" on Microsoft's tablet last year...

 

[ValSalva]

First thing this morning, twentieth in line at a Verizon store and the 16GB white 5s sold out. Had to get a 32GB one. Carriers are not getting many. The numbers for the weekend would be bigger if Apple could supply them. No doubt they are making them as fast as they can.

 

[foodog]

Very less so than usual - very low supplies. There weren't any gold models, and meagre supply of others.

I think that remains to be seen... Should have sales number early next week. Impossible to tell if the demand is causing the shortage or the supply.

 

[apfeljonas]

Still better than last year where it was a 4 weeks.

 

[themoffster]

But wonder how then they can announce over 5 or 6 millions new handsets sold over the first weekend if they are making this up? Do you think they lie about it? I am being serious.....

That's because they are including online orders which won't even ship for more than a fortnight. If you count the number of people who actually have a phone in their hand or have the phone on its way to their house in the postman's bag, you'll be looking at 6 figures tops.

 

[0029937]

Anyone getting a 5c?

If I like the feel and shade of color I may pick one up to carry me over to the 6. Getting a bit sick of the black 4/4s that I've had for the last 3 years.

 

[ibcdrew]

First thing this morning, twentieth in line at a Verizon store and the 16GB white 5s sold out. Had to get a 32GB one. Carriers are not getting many. The numbers for the weekend would be bigger if Apple could supply them. No doubt they are making them as fast as they can.

Same for me - got up at 5:30 and went to a big Verizon store nearby that I figured would have plenty of stock. I was 40th in line and they were so swamped they couldn't even check me out until almost 10.

I was hoping for either the white or the gold in 16GB, but they were already out so I snagged the 'space grey.' Not a huge fan of the color, but I'm probably slapping a case on this bad boy anyways. I went bare (with the exception of ZAGG front & back screen protectors) with my 5, but I want to avoid all the little nicks and scratches this time around. I'll probably get a Mophie Helium case if I can confirm that it won't interfere with either the Touch ID sensor or the dual LED flash on the back of it.

 

[kwrzesien]

MOST DEMOCRATIC LAUNCH EVER!

Really, people need to remember that when they launched 1-2 million new iPhone 3GS's on JUST AT&T and the Apple Stores, and had much less of them back then, and just in the United States, that of course there were long lines, more devices per store, not enough employees, and it took all day to sell them.

Now they are sold at every outlet, all the carriers, in 20 countries on the first day, and even tiny remote stores get a few. They have democratically spread their initial production run around these 20 countries and all their possible users as evenly as possible.

Is the fingerprint sensor constraining their initial production? Probably. Is the champagne case newer or harder to get right than the silver/gray? Maybe. Maybe they are making 8 million instead of 10-15 million that *could* have sold, but are they still making more than last year and just spreading them around better? Yes. Score one for logistics and a world market, and a brilliant strategy by having a "new" 5c in abundance as an alternative.

 

[terraphantm]

Oh wait, "Apple is doomed"...said, an "analyst".

What you don't understand is that even if Apple lost say... 20% of its customers, they'd retain enough loyalists to sell out very quickly at launch. What we don't know yet is whether the sales will be sustained throughout the year

 

[cmichaelb]

The AT&T Store I went to had only 40 black 5s models (and all colors of 5C in unspecified amounts). No white or gold 5S :-(
I got it in black (didn't care too much about the color, just wanted the 64GB one - but the gold was on my mind as an option, but I wanted to see it in person before deciding - guess AT&T/Apple decided that I get black, which I am fine with) - when I got there half an hour before opening the line was < 10 people (but it was one of the tiny AT&T stores where low stock and little choice was to be expected)

Guess Apple was expecting people to go crazy for the cheaper colored iPhones and not so much for the gold ones ....

lol exactly my same experience at a small AT&T store this morning.

-------------------------

One pet peeve- people, if you are going to get in line super early on launch day, please know what you want before you walk in and hold up the line for the rest us. Sheesh.

 

[danpass]

"Demand for the new iPhones has been incredible and we are currently sold out or have limited supply of certain iPhone 5s models in some stores," an Apple representative told AllThingsD.

really

let's go a little further:

"Demand for the new iPhones has been incredible and we are currently sold out or have limited supply of certain iPhone 5s models, with a scratch in the upper left corner and weighing one gram more and in some stores within the mid south of a certain city in a certain state," an Apple representative told AllThingsD.

 

[snowweasel]

Oddly, we were 5th in line at Best Buy, and the first getting phones on AT&T, and they ONLY had 2 32GB Silver at that store. We went to another nearby best buy, and they had 2 32GB Silver, and 16 16GB Black. Target didn't have ANY, but said that system wide, Target stores were getting 500,000 5Ss sometime between now and next Wednesday. Whether or not he knew what he was talking about is anybody's guess.