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

Rot'nApple said:
Spin cycle away!...

An Apple store with 10 gold iPhone units, makes me glad Apple isn't my grocer. I'd hate to wait til Oct to buy my loaf of bread.

Another rumor site has a story about Tim Cook visiting an Apple store in CA on iPhone 5s launch to which someone replied "Tim was probably looking for a gold iPhone." It's funny because it's true!

Loading a store with 10 phones of a brand new color the company hypes and call it amazing when the product of limited supply for each of its stores and third party retailers runs out and label it "due to heavy demand", hmmmm... :rolleyes:

It'll sell tens of millions to be sure, but it seems to be irksome to some people. I remember driving three hours to be at the first Apple store opening on the East Coast. That was an Apple experience. Glad my Apple experience is not waiting all night only to be told the next morning that the color of the phone I want is not available. Otherwise you'd hear me among others on twitter.
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So, in other words, you made stuff up and you're judging people from that?
 
Where's the missing headline?

People who watched the Apple stores come online around the world last night know that in most markets the gold iPhone wasn't even available. EVER. As in, at launch, it was shipping in 10 days + 7 days for delivery. As in, October availability.

For much of the world the only option was to essentially pre-order the gold iPhone on "launch". Most brick and mortar stores in most markets didn't have the gold iPhone in stock either.

Apple's marketing seems disingenuous to me. More like they weren't prepared for launch in most countries - their solution being to buy time by not allowing 5s preorders and come launch only offering them in very limited quantities in select markets.

When and if they announce their numbers, they will sound impressive (of course they will be, look how many markets they tried to launch in at once), but I'm sure it'll be global sales for both 5s + 5c and include orders not delivered or even manufactured yet. Looks like 99% of global 5s orders are still on the assembly line in China.

I actually applaud Apple for their approach to the problem and ability to spin it in their favor, but let's be honest in this forum: this time there's clearly a case of being unprepared for launch.
 
Demand is so incredible.....

we've sold out or

our supply chain and market research are pants and wasn't suitably stocked to meet the rush that we knew was going to happen due to our market research. Apple can't market a product like this and then appear oh so surprised by high demand and sell outs.

It makes good headlines even if it's operationally inept.
 
Went to our local ATT store....arrived at 8 am; I was probably the 50th in line. An associate came outside and asked everyone what they wanted. More in line were asking for a 5s instead of a 5c. They had all sizes of 5s in stock, but grey only.

Wife was wanting white/silver, so I checked out around 8:45 and drove to local Apple store. They had ran out of white phones half an hour after they opened, so I came home and ordered wife a phone online. Says 7-10 days shipping, but who knows at this point.
 
elgrecomac said:
So let me get this right...

Apple/Foxcomm has been making new phones for months and the run out within a few minutes of launch? Really?

Smells like production was intentionally limited to create the n illusion of scarcity. Apple would't do that to manipulate the market, have nice headlines etc, would they?

Yes, the would because Apple is the best marketing company in the world.
:cool:
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Yes, but the point of Apple's marketing is to produce immediate sales not to have good copy for press releases. Slick marketing with no product to sell is a waste of effort. Apple wants to sell phones today when buyers are saying "take my money," not hope they'll stick around for a month when they have more stock. I don't get why people don't understand the whole intentionally shorting stock to gin up excitement is a tired concept that doesn't work except in some people's heads.

As I noted in an earlier post Apple will share actual sales numbers on Monday so that busts your theory because you can't say it's hype to gin up future sales when Apple shows all the past sales you said were nonexistent.
 
friedmud said:
Living in a small town I never expect lines anywhere... so I was surprised to see that I was ~30th in line when I showed up an hour before the AT&T store opened up this morning!

My store only got 40 phones total and all were "Space Gray". They got:

20 16GB
10 32GB
10 64GB

Being ~30th in line they had run out of 16GB (what I wanted) by the time they got to me.... so I went with 32GB (a bit of extra space never hurts!)

I love the Space Gray - and everything else about the phone is awesome! Well done Apple!
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My small town store had maybe 5 5s models and more 5c models (dont know the number of those)
 
tmash said:
The cynic in me wonders if they didn't come out with two new iPhone's (one of which is essentially the same as the previous years model) because they knew that the yields on the 5S would be so low. This way they can still offer some customers a "new" iPhone in the 5C while they work on increasing yields of the 5S.
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I doubt it. They spent a lot of time working on the 5C enclosure I'm sure and it was around for a long time, not a rush job.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
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?
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I generally agree with your points but I know of at least one update from a iPhone 4s that will not happen this year....

My wife used her upgrade to get a Samsung S4 Active because of the larger screen and even though I offered her to sell it and get an iPhone she said that she will wait until Apple offers a larger screen.....

So we'll see if she's alone or not.
 
szw-mapple fan said:
Who knew gold could be so popular?:D
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While waiting in line this morning a dude two spots in front of me wanted gold so badly he paid a guy a few spots ahead of him and the guy's friend $1,000 to get the lone gold 16gb iPhone 5S that was in the store. :eek: The guy who he bought it from then took the money and bought himself a gold 64GB iPhone 5S. His friend ended up wanting the black one anyway, so they ended up WAY ahead. :rolleyes:

Made NO sense. A fool and his money are soon parted!
 
Apple screwed our city over here in San Antonio. Apparently no gold phones shipped this way only black/silver 5s made it down here.
 
That's gold, Jerry! GOLD!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CF7OnW4XDck&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCF7OnW4XDck
 
Kaibelf said:
While waiting in line this morning a dude two spots in front of me wanted gold so badly he paid a guy a few spots ahead of him and the guy's friend $1,000 to get the lone gold 16gb iPhone 5S that was in the store. :eek: The guy who he bought it from then took the money and bought himself a gold 64GB iPhone 5S. His friend ended up wanting the black one anyway, so they ended up WAY ahead. :rolleyes:

Made NO sense. A fool and his money are soon parted!
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He must have thought the 64GB one would have weighed too much :D
 
scbn said:
It seems with 5s coming out, nobody cares about the 5c anymore... :)
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No one needed to care about the 5C ever. But, of course, there are those on here who were so sure the 5C was going to be a hit, and a true innovation (now that you can get a year old phone in a melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hand phone----let them swallow their pride and naïveté).

The 5S is the real iPhone.
 
iSunrise said:
Of course it´s "incredible". If there´s a shortage of 5s devices, what would you expect them to say otherwise.
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Long lines , longest lines ever.. Is not an indicator of short supply.. But high demand.. ...
Are u a samsung paid troll?
 
I think people forget how close actual production is to launch day. There are only so many phones that can be created and loaded with the new iOS prior to launch day. If you manufactured a million units in the past 30 days, that would be 33,000 units a day, or 1,800 an hour if the plant ran 18 ours a day, or 30 per minute, flying off the line. I of course have no idea how many were produced prior to launch, but whether it is 1 million or 2 million, when you distribute it globally to every iPhone retailer and Apple Store, the numbers per store get thin pretty fast.
 
FelixAng said:
No one needed to care about the 5C ever. But, of course, there are those on here who were so sure the 5C was going to be a hit, and a true innovation (now that you can get a year old phone in a melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hand phone----let them swallow their pride and naïveté).

The 5S is the real iPhone.
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I think u will end up being the one to swallow your pride.
Lets revisit this post after holidays!
5C is going to be a very popular gift item for kids and early teens and the female population.
 
Smartass said:
of course they're sold out, they only made like 100 iphones for the whole world. Need to wait for quarter results, only then you will see the real numbers. Apple is always full of s*** so dont believe what they say.

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Monday they will announce how many consumers bought the iPhone. No need to wait for the quarterly results.
 
notabadname said:
I think people forget how close actual production is to launch day. There are only so many phones that can be created and loaded with the new iOS prior to launch day. If you manufactured a million units in the past 30 days, that would be 33,000 units a day, or 1,800 an hour if the plant ran 18 ours a day, or 30 per minute, flying off the line. I of course have no idea how many were produced prior to launch, but whether it is 1 million or 2 million, when you distribute it globally to every iPhone retailer and Apple Store, the numbers per store get thin pretty fast.
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Last year apple sold 5 million at launch weekend.
I am pretty sure they planned on more for this launch !
 
TallManNY said:
The 4S also sold out.

https://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/0...ne-4s-pre-order-stocks-for-launch-day-in-u-s/

This might be more and faster, or Apple has lower supplies. But consider that the smartphone market is much larger than it was two years ago.

It doesn't matter if Apple anticipates the demand or not. They are limited by the physical capacity of the supply line and manufacturing plants. Those lines can be expanded a bit for the launch period (workers can work harder and 24/7), but in general to be efficient and keep costs low, the whole system must be sized for expected daily production needed out of them over the course of the entire year. So Apple is never going to be able to meet launch day demand. And this is especially the case as the smartphone market gets bigger and bigger.

And keep in mind, while this was a launch in a good number of countries, this wasn't even close to a world wide launch. There are probably 40 million folks in the world as of this morning who would buy an iPhone 5s. There is no way to have that much product available right away.
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Don't you know that trying to tell them the truth is like pointless? They just won't believe you and they are going to continue to believe that this is a plan by Apple to limit supplies just to drive up demand.
 
tmash said:
The cynic in me wonders if they didn't come out with two new iPhone's (one of which is essentially the same as the previous years model) because they knew that the yields on the 5S would be so low. This way they can still offer some customers a "new" iPhone in the 5C while they work on increasing yields of the 5S.
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I doubt it. The two phones appeal to different markets. I would never buy a 5C since I have a 5 already, which will be the case with all 5 upgraders. For 4 and 4S upgraders maybe, but I still think there is a huge segment that just wants the newest and most advanced tech available. That's who'll buy the 5S.

Crap; I had to pay a $300 early upgrade fee to get mine. but I HAD TO HAVE IT!
 
Alumeenium said:
stores around here got 2 to 4 Gold phones each

thats NOT millions thats about 2,000 globally

What a JOKE!
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So each store got an average of 3 phones. You surmise there are ~ 667 stores selling phones in the whole world? There are more than that in Metro Atlanta.
 
themoffster said:
They want to pull the finger out and actually start having supplies of the stuff.
This "incredible demand" is getting old.

Of course there will be "incredible demand" if you only have two dozen of the things to sell in every shop.
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I am with you on this.

Soon people will realize what 5S brings to the table..nothing new when it comes to mobile phone/computer.

It is all just marketing gimmick. I remember how I was fooled by "Siri". Never again.

I am not saying Apple is not going to sell in millions and their products are not well made. I think they make the best hardware but Apple marketing is special which hypnotizes the consumer and they themselves take the wallet out ask Apple to take their money!!
 
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