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Apple Watch Production Back on Track After 'Labor Shortages' Caused Initial Delays

samcraig said:
Even in jest, your comments are offensive.
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Those comments are so relevant and appropriate here. The humor in his comments is because of the irony.

You have so many RAGE posts here about not getting these watches quicker. Rage about supply, rage about launch, rage about missing the preorder boat by 30 minutes and being set back weeks.

On the other hand, the same crowd rages about Chinese labor, unfair wages, unfair work practices, slave labor, sweatshop environment etc.

So I'd say his humor is spot on relevant here. 🙄
 
So we here excuses like:

- faulty haptic engine
- complex watch bands
- labor shortage...

This is BS. Apple is managing their influence over customers - and this is all a bit of an experiment on a grand scale. They are trying to figure out what they can do to goose demand for what is arguably a bit of a dog in its current iteration. If this was truly an issue for Apple, we'd be hearing about some VP of manufacturing who is getting canned for poor planning.

Apple is using scarcity as a marketing tool... Just like TV ads and celebrity show-offs to make you think you need to have one.

I've always said that Apple will open the floodgates to ensure that anyone who wants one will get one - by the end of their fiscal year. That's June.
 
phillipduran said:
Those comments are so relevant and appropriate here. The humor in his comments is because of the irony.

You have so many RAGE posts here about not getting these watches quicker. Rage about supply, rage about launch, rage about missing the preorder boat by 30 minutes and being set back weeks.

On the other hand, the same crowd rages about Chinese labor, unfair wages, unfair work practices, slave labor, sweatshop environment etc.

So I'd say his humor is spot on relevant here. 🙄
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Eyeroll all you want. I never said anything about relevancy. I stated that the comments are offensive.
 
Rogifan said:
Really? So Apple knows nothing about the lunar new year and was completely caught off guard by these work stoppages or had no contingency in place? I'm not buying it.
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Oh I don't COMPLETELY buy the story, but I think that it's plausible that it had something to do with it. I don't think Apple was unaware of LNY but the downtime may have been longer than they expected, or Quanta may have been interrupted more than they expected, or even Quanta's suppliers might have lost more product than forecast. I don't think it's the whole story, there's the defective Taptic Engine story from a while back, plus the hassles of tooling up to full production on any new product. But LNY could very well have been part of the problem. I don't think there was one cause.
 
My suspicion is that Apple had no idea of how well the watch, and its variations, would sell and in essence decided on a build to order plan.

Same reason for the mail order idea as newscasts showing only a few people waiting in line would have been devastating.

And the shortage created a buzz as everyone has noted.

This was very smart and it would not be surprising if the watch is sold this way forever, although with sorter waiting times.
 
My suspicion is that it's several factors all stemming from "high demand" coupled with several vendors and various production complications/challenges in creating the device.

Perhaps a part of that formula is labor, but it's not likely the "sole" reason.
 
Cory Bauer said:
I don't think people outside the Watch forum even realize how bad it really is; Apple still hasn't fullfilled the first 9 hours of pre-orders from the first day of pre-orders...five weeks ago. Think about that for a while.
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What 9 hours are you talking about, none of the people who got confirmed at 3.14EST (14 minutes after the launch) got preparing for shipment or anything. It is processing for 35 days even though I ordered within the first ten minutes.
 
I woke up at 3 am on 4/10 to order the darn thing window 13-27 May and I am still seating here looking at my empty wrist. Email confirmation xx:03 ET.
 
pilotpat said:
The only thing impressive about this launch has been how impressively slow the watches are being shipped. I ordered on 4/10 at 12:14am Pacific time and still processing. 🙁
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exactly same here. If it doesn't change status till tonight I am canceling the order. I didn't wake up at 3am to be that miserable, someone must be punished even though small. Sorry Apple but you lost my respect
 
Sorry, but no .... I don't quite buy this.

I agree with the general idea that the Apple Watch launch was experimental on Apple's part. (By that, I mean taking the advice of Angela Ahrendts who felt it should be offered in selected high-end retailers of fashion clothing goods on launch day, and who didn't think it was wise to make people wait in long lines hours/days before the Apple stores opened to try to buy a watch.)

I don't think the issues mentioned are just made-up excuses, designed to try to manipulate demand for the product though. If anything, all of that just puts Apple in a more negative light.

The faulty haptic engine is a real, known issue that was isolated to one of two contractors building it for them, and which was apparently caught shortly after the products began shipping out to the very first customers. IMO, if this wasn't handled in this way - you would have just seen a repeat of the anger people often have with "revision A" Apple product releases, where they scream about lack of quality control and the need for another class action lawsuit for selling people something defective, etc. etc.

According to the 9to5mac folks, anyway, there's another similar problem Apple caught early on with the black sport bands discoloring in only a few days' of use. That might well explain why so many of the "space grey watch with black sport band" orders seem to be held up at this time.

The labor shortage is only B.S. in the sense that it's a Chinese holiday season that everyone is aware of who contracts with them for production of goods. It really does cause production shortages and slowdowns, but that's been the case for lots of computer component makers over the years and is either planned for or accepted as "how it all works". In this case, it probably was just pointed out as a small contributing factor because it can't HELP a product shortage situation to have less labor available for a couple weeks, right around product launch time.


louden said:
So we here excuses like:

- faulty haptic engine
- complex watch bands
- labor shortage...

This is BS. Apple is managing their influence over customers - and this is all a bit of an experiment on a grand scale. They are trying to figure out what they can do to goose demand for what is arguably a bit of a dog in its current iteration. If this was truly an issue for Apple, we'd be hearing about some VP of manufacturing who is getting canned for poor planning.

Apple is using scarcity as a marketing tool... Just like TV ads and celebrity show-offs to make you think you need to have one.

I've always said that Apple will open the floodgates to ensure that anyone who wants one will get one - by the end of their fiscal year. That's June.
Click to expand...
 
Batman89 said:
How great would it be if Apple produced its products in the United States?

Like seriously. They can afford it.
Click to expand...

They probably can but most of us probably won't be able to afford it.
I don't think they can even make it here even if they wanted to and can afford it, due to the NIMBY mentality.
 
The author of this article states that there has been high demand for the Apple Watch. We have no idea what the demand for the Apple Watch has been, as Tim Cook has refused to release sales figures. As such, it is reasonable to assume that demand has been low, otherwise Cook would have been eager to proclaim the good news.

It is in Cook's interest to increase the share price of Apple, as it reflects well on Apple; many Apple employees also own Apple shares and are paid with them. Announcing stellar sales of the Apple Watch would have certainly increased the share price. Therefore, silence on this matter can only indicate bad news, which is why the share price has been so stagnant in recent weeks.

Cook's decision to withhold sales figures from the public has backfired.
 
Chinese new year is only a week/10 days long, so that would have pushed things back by two weeks at most.

Everyone who deals with China understands the problems with the New Year. Apple has been manufacturing there for forever, and I highly doubt that Tim Cook would have forgotten about the two week manufacturing hole in China's calendar.
 
louden said:
So we here excuses like:

- faulty haptic engine
- complex watch bands
- labor shortage...

This is BS. Apple is managing their influence over customers - and this is all a bit of an experiment on a grand scale. They are trying to figure out what they can do to goose demand for what is arguably a bit of a dog in its current iteration. If this was truly an issue for Apple, we'd be hearing about some VP of manufacturing who is getting canned for poor planning.

Apple is using scarcity as a marketing tool... Just like TV ads and celebrity show-offs to make you think you need to have one.

I've always said that Apple will open the floodgates to ensure that anyone who wants one will get one - by the end of their fiscal year. That's June.
Click to expand...

Oh, please. Apple's in the business of making money. They absolutely do not need to "goose" demand for any of their products. The demand is there for the Apple Watch because it's an Apple product selling into a market where the existing "smart" watches have effectively shown the negative side of wearables.

Put yourself in the shoes of any key Apple executive and just try to think of a meeting where you're saying, "Well we don't know if these are going to sell, so let's limit launch sales, which will drive up demand, then once demand has hit a fever pitch, we'll open up production and flood the market. That will make us look like hero's!" It never happens. And if it did, the executive saying that would likely get fired on the spot. It's just not how Apple works or needs to work. There are plenty of companies that do exactly that, but Apple is not one of them.

Sure, Apple is great at creating demand for things we didn't know we wanted / needed, but the products they [generally] produce and sell meet / exceed expectations, so they're clearly doing the right thing.
 
Great to know. The status of my watch just changed from June to "June 22 - June 29". I am elated 🙁
 
Benjamin Frost said:
The author of this article states that there has been high demand for the Apple Watch. We have no idea what the demand for the Apple Watch has been, as Tim Cook has refused to release sales figures. As such, it is reasonable to assume that demand has been low, otherwise Cook would have been eager to proclaim the good news.

It is in Cook's interest to increase the share price of Apple, as it reflects well on Apple; many Apple employees also own Apple shares and are paid with them. Announcing stellar sales of the Apple Watch would have certainly increased the share price. Therefore, silence on this matter can only indicate bad news, which is why the share price has been so stagnant in recent weeks.

Cook's decision to withhold sales figures from the public has backfired.
Click to expand...

I think you're taking a stab at one potential scenario to explain why Apple has not released sales for the Watch and it doesn't make sense when you look at the issue big-picture.

Personally, I believe they're not sharing numbers because they are low, not because of lack of demand, but because of supply chain limitations. It's really a given that they are behind in production and knew that was going to be the case, otherwise they never would have done the online-only, ordering and delivery model. The fact that stores still don't have inventory tells me they're woefully behind on getting product made, complicated further by trying to guess how to split up production by all the various skus needed.

If they had enough stock produced ahead of time, they would have loaded all their stores with hundreds or thousands of Watches, not to mention offering them up to other mid-high end retailers like Nordstrom's (in the US), but they didn't because they couldn't.
 
I read this with amazement. You'd think that Apple, who is now being so buddy-buddy with China, would have had the simple forethought to check for, or due to years of product launches, already KNOW of LOCAL reasons for production delays, and timed things around them, started earlier, or something? I know in Germany and many other places in Europe, there are typically mass two-week vacation times, where a lot doesn't get done, and planning is made around them as to not cause delays. This seems a big oops on Apple's part, and certainly stained its reputation with even fervent fans.

Only excuse I can think of, maybe, is that this is a non-standard time of year for an Apple launch...and maybe people were asleep at the wheel...
 
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