Apple's Online Store in the U.S. is now listing all capacities and colors of iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus from all carriers as in stock, with the company now appearing to have now achieved supply and demand balance. The SIM-free iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are also showing an avaliability of 1 business day.
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Last month, shipping estimates for the 16/64GB iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus improved drastically, with estimates improving to 3 to 5 days in early December and jumping to 1 to 3 day and 1 day estimates later in the month. The larger-capacity 128GB devices were somewhat constrained throughout the month, with estimates remaining at 7 to 10 days and jumping to 3 to 5 days in December.
Apple's Online Store in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are also listing both devices as in stock. Meanwhile, the company's other stores in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico are showing a shipping estimate of 1 business day.
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have experienced severely constrained supplies since their launch in September, with Apple working to improve available supply. Apple was even said to be delaying mass production on its larger-screen iPad Pro to puts its efforts towards the iPhone 6 Plus.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Now if only it didn't have 1GB of ram, a protruding camera, and a really terrible design, I'd be all over it.
I hate Apple's lack of supply to meet demand as much as the next guy, but where would they have stored these tens of millions of devices? Remember, there was something like 10 million preorders in the first weekend alone. Also, God help them if a serious design flaw was found by users when it shipped. What do you do with those tens of millions of units you've already made? Not to mention leaks when you have warehouses of your yet-to-be-launched device sitting around weeks or months in advance. There's probably many other reasons I haven't even thought of why they wouldn't want to make a too an large an inventory in advance, even assuming that they are able to.On the side note, this is how inventory should have been from day 1. They had all summer to make tons of stock.
Your other complaints are of course highly subjective, especially the "really terrible design". I find that the previous generation of iPhones look rather blockish compared to the 6/6+, and of course the stripes on the back and protruding camera don't really matter when most people are going to use cases that mask those features anyway.
Two things:
Exactly. And furthermore, longer lead times between product announcements and the actual shipping date would give the competition more time to come up with their own variants of desirable new features, also not desirable in the cut-throat business consumer electronics has become.1 - They spent all summer engineering it. You can't begin mass producing it until you've finalized the designs.
2 - They would have had far more leaks, much further in advance, if they had begun mass production sooner. They hate leaks - when a product is revealed on stage, they want it to be the first time people have seen it. They could announce them further in advance of going on sale, but that would be detrimental to sales of the current model (people stop buying it because they know when the new one is coming and what new features it'll have) and it harms sales of the next model (it allows hype to die down between the reveal and the actual on sale date.)…..
And last but not least, manufacturers depend to some degree on the supply chain of components, over which they have virtually no control.
On the side note, this is how inventory should have been from day 1. They had all summer to make tons of stock.
Two things:
1 - They spent all summer engineering it. You can't begin mass producing it until you've finalized the designs.
2 - They would have had far more leaks, much further in advance, if they had begun mass production sooner. They hate leaks - when a product is revealed on stage, they want it to be the first time people have seen it. They could announce them further in advance of going on sale, but that would be detrimental to sales of the current model (people stop buying it because they know when the new one is coming and what new features it'll have) and it harms sales of the next model (it allows hype to die down between the reveal and the actual on sale date.)
For perspective, how long did it take past iPhones to reach this point and how many sales did they ultimately make? Do the two numbers relate to each other so we can predict how many sales Apple made so far?