Another Internet Myth that needs busting. Samsung high end sales pale in comparison to Apple. Samsung only sold 2.5 million Note 7's worldwide. There's no evidence that Samsung's debacle impacted demand the first week/weekend. Indeed, we know that the vast majority of people still had their Note 7s, and there aren't enough Note 7 owners to have made that a material difference at this point. Even if all 2.5 million Note 7 owners switched to an iPhone 7, which they obviously didn't come close to, it wouldn't have changed the peak demand problem Apple new and planned for. Remember, with the iPhone 6, Apple sold around 13 million the first weekend. That's the scale Apple is dealing with.
Over time, the Samsung problem will likely add to the increasing trend of Android switchers (remember in the past 6 months Android switchers to iPhone grew at a record number) and may likely impact sales somewhat, but as a percentage of sales it won't impact production schedules materially because the trend already was underway and the number of Note 7 owners is so small compared to iPhones.
Finally, of course Apple has a good idea of what the initial demand will be. But no manufacturer would be insane enough to scale up factories and workers to meet initial peak demand only to have fire tens of thousands of workers the next month and idle billions in production capacity. Apple is shipping them as fast as they can reasonably be produced. While individual stores prioritizing inventory holds to deal with the IUP glitch is workable, but the idea of setting aside factory inventory doesn't make sense. Next year, what would make sense is simply to let them have priority in on-line ordering, maybe the day before everyone else. After that it is the usual FCFS.
