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iPhone 5s Supplies Dry Up Quickly in Germany, France, and the U.K.
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$99 in USA only. Is that good enough for you?
There are 190+ other countries in the world where a iPhone is not $99 all the time.
/sigh
Of course the gold was going to sell well, it's the only one whereby others can actually tell that you have an iPhone 5S and not a 5!!! Plus, gold is a very desirable colour in China and is likely to be aimed at that market in particular. Indeed, the most highly sought after model in China today is the gold one.
The comment is actually written by a noob with almost no reputation. It's not by iFixit.
Well launches are a funny thing to supply. You don't really want to sit on too much stock up front as it is investment without a return, which shareholders hate. Second the logistics of physically shipping the product is challenging (at some launches Apple literally buys all spare air freight on some routes). Even once the launch quantities are out there's now a delay while you get quantities suitable for shipment again, which is why you will see a one or two week lag after a launch. Plus after launch they need to consider preparing the launch for other markets, particularly leading into Christmas.
In terms of quantity, to put it in perspective, Apple typically sit on 10 to 12 weeks stock from memory. Most supply chains don't have too much flexibility because scope to scale up excessively means you have over invested. Given launch weekend sales of the iphone 5 was 5 million that will account for around 3 or 4 weeks stock in three days, an additional order of magnitude (depending on what proportion are lower value sales in their quarterly totals). They won't be at full manufacturing speeds straight away so that's probably around 6 weeks to manufacture initially plus any other lead time.
When you are talking those lead times if a part supplier doesn't deliver the volumes you need straight away, which it looks like the case here, it can cause quite a headache for launch volumes. In addition to the fingerprint sensor a part of me suspects that like the white in the iPhone 4, Apple may have had issues with the gold colour as well. Add to all of this that in this instance Apple is also refreshing their old model, which requires another range of stock preparation and logistics management.
The next part to look at is what's the cost of not meeting market demand? Yes you'll lose some proportion of sales to competitors but a lot of your planned early purchasers aren't going to switch, they are just going to complain. News articles and people complaining they can't get an item are free marketing to the people that don't know about the launch, who may then hold off a purchase of something else. I am sure Apple would like more 5S' in the supply chain, particularly gold and silver, but the reality is Tim Cook is one of the best supply chain leaders and as long as they can bring supply and demand to equilibrium quickly for the Christmas period it will be ok.
Another thing to note companies will always prefer to get you into stores so don't be surprised to see online orders artificially restricted when stock is particularly short.
Macrumors said the Apple Store App is more reliable under load than the website.
I was reading my confirmation email before the website store went live!
Yep! In my opinion they should have dropped support for the 4 too. It's just so far behind now! Plus my vibrate motor stopped working yesterday.
That's Apple's stock holding. I was referring to their channel stock holding, which as it turns out is targeted at 4 to 6 weeks for the iPhone based on their Q3 2013 Q&A.. Just goes to show why big stock holdings for a launch are a challenge though.
I've been queuing in Bluewater since 2am, maybe 150 people in front of me. They ran out of Gold ones pretty instantly and out of S model half way before getting to me. They must have had 50-100 S phones in total, pretty lame for an iPhone release event at an official Apple Store.
Online using the app worked fine until it got to the upgrade validation page. ATT's servers obviously couldn't handle the traffic and it couldn't validate the account. Eventually a page came up stating: "We can't reach the carrier systems to process your order, but we have reserved an iPhone for you". I'm not surprised.
When I logged on the web order page it said 1-3 days for a 64gb Black. Hope that means when they are able to complete my order I will be in that shipping window as well!
Update: At 0:24am the Apple site had moved to 7-10 days for Gray or Gold, and still 1-3 days for Silver. Supplies may be "decent'
When I logged on the web order page it said 1-3 days for a 64gb Black. Hope that means when they are able to complete my order I will be in that shipping window as well!
Update: At 0:24am the Apple site had moved to 7-10 days for Gray or Gold, and still 1-3 days for Silver. Supplies may be "decent'
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Was at the Liverpool 1 since 3am, at 7:15 they ran out of 5s completely, I was in the first 100 people waiting for it. How can an Apple store get less than 200 units for a launch. By the way they took a photo of the queue before they told us. The staff were pushing the sale of 5c waaay too much as well. Not impressed at all this time.
I'm in the UK. I got on the Apple Store app at exactly 12am and it was 12:01 when I was able to order. Even after my order had went through on the app, the Apple website was still showing the "updating the site" poster still.
So basically I could have not ordered any sooner. And I still got the the 7-10 day dispatch.