Apple just didn't prepare for demand. A worldwide launch sounds like a nice thing, but it's a logistical nightmare. The same with introducing colors at the launch of a new product. You run out of stock of one phone (16GB black) faster than others.
I agree with the colors thing. I think that was a dumb move. i understand changing things up so you know that you have a 1Gen in hand and not a 2Gen. but they should have just done white or black. 99% of folks are going to put a cover on it anyway, so they can pick their color that way.
I disagree about the worldwide thing. they needed to expand the markets to cut down on the breaking of the phones to sell overseas. or at least try to cut down on it. i suspect that a fair bit of those sales were well meaning folks that would have bought them legally if they could. but they couldn't so they did what they could and were probably shafted with a much higher price.
and in terms of the general demand issue, there was no way they could prepare. even if they had done an 'interest' list it would have been just a very broad guideline since many of the folks probably would have backed out for one reason or another. and a lot of folks wouldn't make up their minds if they were interested until the last minute.
i have little doubt that even if it takes a month for restock, the customers will be there. who knows, at that point they might allow shopping by appointment if the demand isn't flooding still
If many Apple Stores got new stock today, than this isn't that bad. But if many Apple Stores don't get re-stocked this week, then it's clear that Apple didn't expect this high of a demand worldwide, and didn't procure enough manufacturing facilities or components.
my local store (just outside of Los Angeles proper) ran out of 16 gig blacks early thursday morning, 8 GBs around Friday lunch and 16Whites about 6.30 that evening. Saturday they got about 50 16Blacks which went that day. I wasn't working yesterday (I work at another store on that same mall and could watch the lines out my store's windows) but I asked one of the sales people and he had been told that another delivery (exact models unknown) was already in transit and should show up early this week. so they are trying to avoid any long stockouts.
If I were Apple, what I would have done is have the launch on July 11th with each handset costing $600, and pre-announce that in 6 weeks the handsets will be subsidized and start costing $200 with an AT&T (or whatever for your given country) lock-in. That way everyone knows what's happening, Apple can sell them online and have at-home activation (no insane lines), and a tidy extra profit is made off the first phones sold.
never happen. the cell phone companies are in this for the new customers. selling it at 'full' price would just make the phones available for folks to unlock and use with whomever, not with the contracted carrier.
so the phone services would never agree to it. and there are likely contracts that give them to power to stop such an idea.
so perhaps the best plan would be to just sell the dang things at like $500/$600 with no lock and let the customers deal with figuring out the rest. i'm sure the Apple store employees would love to not have to deal with the service set up
I expect to appear an Apple apologist, but this whole multi-platform, multi-national product launch is extremely complicated and kudos go to everyone at Apple and the cellular providers for how well things have actually gone.
agreed.
what a lot of folks here and outside seem to have forgotten is that the iphone just started last year. as a piece of equipment it is a toddler. in store activation and a world market is a baby, a new born baby at that.
so yeah there are going to be problems. there's late nights, there's spit up on your favorite shirt cause you forgot to get out a burp rag, there's upset stomachs, there's boo boos from falling down trying out this walking thing for the first time. etc
but things could have been a lot worse. and Apple by now knows what and where the issues are and will work to fix them. because that is what Apple does. but some of that fixing will take time.
Guaranteed to drop further when Wall Street expectations are not met. :
I have little doubt that Apple will bounce back.
compare this expected drop to something like Barnes and Noble or its rival Borders Books. I have a friend that works for Borders. when he started two years ago he was awarded stock options at a price of around $25 a share. He couldn't cash them in until the end of his first year, at which point they were worth only $27 a share. He figured why both and let them die. now they would be worth about $5 a share and his employer is taking offers for someone to buy them (much like AOL and TimeWarner when AOL almost went bust). and this is after cutting back the work force (his store lost two management positions and has a hiring freeze that he tells me is company wide), plus no more overtime pay for working holidays and several other perks are gone.
Apple on the other hand did just sell over a million iphones and is probably doing a healthy amount of computer sales with their annual free ipod for college kids thing. so what's a measly $10 drop in the stock. they can turn that around just by announcing a new laptop or such.
There are around 80 countries launching the iPhone 3G this year, yet only 22 were choose from July 11th. That could be construed as staggering.
I've never used that word to mean "me first."
Where is this anti-American attitude coming from. It doesn't matter what country your from, if Apple were to release a product in one country first wouldn't you figure it would be the country of their origin. I certainly don't expect Top Gear to air on BBC America before it aires on BBC in the UK.
I think Apple initiated a launch with the most popular countries that use 3G cellphones and spent a long time figuring out how much product it would require. Did they undershoot their estimate or is this planned attempt to great more demand? I think it's the former.
Yes it was. The use of the word "example" was especially bad.
So you are saying that there are "two bit" countries in Africa? That sound quite elitist. I've been to many countries on almost all continents and no matter how destitute or poor the average populace is there is no place I've visited that I'd describe as such... not even that really filthy one (you know the one I mean).
"2 bit" countries in Africa plus India and China are the only places in the world where carriers will add 100 million + new subscribers in the next 5 years. Those carriers are extremely powerful and command cashflows and growth valuations that are the envy of AT&T and Verizon. Don't be arrogant based on ignorance.
I have to slightly disagree. I say slightly because I still agree that the best way to get an accurate answer as to if your local store has iPhones in stock is to call them,
it would be great if they had a menu item on the phone system for current avail on the phones. because that website I have been told is just the end of the day. it is not updated throughout the day so it is often wrong.
but imagine calling your local store.
"Thank you for calling the Apple Store at XX. For blah blah . . . . For current iphone availability press 7."
"Today is Monday July 21st. As of 10am. We are currently out of stock on all iphone models. Please call back as we will update this information as more stock is received"
you call back at 1pm just after a new shipment comes in
"Today is Monday July 21st. As of 12.30pm, we have the 8Gig iphone and the 16Gig in white available for purchase."
you call back that evening about 8pm
" . . . as of 8pm, we have the 8 gig iphone available for purchase"
and so on.
yes it would take a few minutes for someone to record the message but it would give accurate info and stop the poor staff from having to repeat the details for tons of callers or dealing with pissed non iphone callers that couldn't get through
It's funny that any criticism of America or Americans triggers defensive responses. They're so dominant that they can't take one on the chin?
Funny you think you're addressing 'all of America' when you make a statement like that? Are you representing the views of your country? Are you an ambassador of some stripe?
Sold out when? Maybe between 9PM and 9AM but Apple stores appear to be taking deliveries of iPhones and showing inventory.
The availability checker is pretty close to live although you will need to adjust your system time to get by the code that checks your systems time to allow you to choose a state. As of a few minutes ago several stores in CA already show having stock.
I'd also like to mention that I've tested this theory. My hometown Apple store in Reno, NV showed as having 8GB phones at about 2PM on Thursday last week and sure enough I called them up and they had them in stock. I called them a few hours later when they changed to red on the availability tool and they were out. The following day (at different times) the same happened with the 16gb phones.
the investors need to have a little faith. just because we don't know the succession plan doesn't mean there isn't one. or that the company is suddenly going to go to hell because Steve isn't at the helm. Apple is not just Steve Jobs
Does this mean no one else will ever get a new iPhone and Apple has no intension of making more. I am disappointed because I thought i could just wait a few weeks before getting mine and not deal with a crowd. Where can I get a used one?
I thought this trick was well known, but just in case you haven't tried this yet, here's a tip for anyone interested in iPhone 3G purchasing strategies.
Tip: In my experience, the iPhone availability page is accurate (up to a certain point anyway), and you don't really have to wait until after 9pm local time to check store(s) in your area. If you manually set your computer's clock to post 9pm, and refresh the page, it will show you current availability with reasonable accuracy.
Since the new iPhone has the same plastic back as older iPods, and its prone to scratching (re: Ars Techinica iPhone 3G Review) mine will be going into a case immediately. I could care less what color the back is so I was more than happy to settle for the first available 16GB model. Using the availability tip above, I looked for Seattle area stores, noticed the store in Tukwila Southcenter just went green for 16GB White, I started towards Tukwila. Took me 20 minutes to get there, the store was busy but noticed no lines, asked one of the employees if they still had any 16GB in stock, he confirmed they just received a shipment of white 16GB 3Gs not more than an hour ago, I said perfect I'll take one. No lines, no hassle, and purchase and activation took less than 10 minutes. This is what the purchase experience should be, I promised myself that I wouldn't purchase one until I could just walk in the store and buy one, no lines no multi-hour wait.
For those of you that know you'll be putting the iPhone in a case, there's really no reason to concern yourself over the color of the plastic back, and if you want the 16GB model, go for the white model, the demand is less and they're more readily available vs. the black model.
The availability checker is pretty close to live although you will need to adjust your system time to get by the code that checks your systems time to allow you to choose a state. As of a few minutes ago several stores in CA already show having stock.
I didn't know if worked that way. Thanks for the tip and welcome to AI.
"2 bit" countries in Africa plus India and China are the only places in the world where carriers will add 100 million + new subscribers in the next 5 years. Those carriers are extremely powerful and command cashflows and growth valuations that are the envy of AT&T and Verizon. Don't be arrogant based on ignorance.
What part of my comment did you construe as arrogant toward and ignorant about Africa?
"2 bit" countries in Africa plus India and China are the only places in the world where carriers will add 100 million + new subscribers in the next 5 years. Those carriers are extremely powerful and command cashflows and growth valuations that are the envy of AT&T and Verizon. Don't be arrogant based on ignorance.
Yeah and they buy $20 cell phones on $5 per month plans. They represent growth but they're not buying many iPhones or other high-end product. Maybe the Mugabe and his cronies are but the populations are too poor right now.
I'm not sure what you point is about the cashflows of large corps who play in this market. They're not African companies. The Indian and Chinese companies are bigger and indigenous but so what? This isn't a game of "my country is better than yours".
Comments
Why isnt there enough to go round.
Demand > Supply
Apple just didn't prepare for demand. A worldwide launch sounds like a nice thing, but it's a logistical nightmare. The same with introducing colors at the launch of a new product. You run out of stock of one phone (16GB black) faster than others.
I agree with the colors thing. I think that was a dumb move. i understand changing things up so you know that you have a 1Gen in hand and not a 2Gen. but they should have just done white or black. 99% of folks are going to put a cover on it anyway, so they can pick their color that way.
I disagree about the worldwide thing. they needed to expand the markets to cut down on the breaking of the phones to sell overseas. or at least try to cut down on it. i suspect that a fair bit of those sales were well meaning folks that would have bought them legally if they could. but they couldn't so they did what they could and were probably shafted with a much higher price.
and in terms of the general demand issue, there was no way they could prepare. even if they had done an 'interest' list it would have been just a very broad guideline since many of the folks probably would have backed out for one reason or another. and a lot of folks wouldn't make up their minds if they were interested until the last minute.
i have little doubt that even if it takes a month for restock, the customers will be there. who knows, at that point they might allow shopping by appointment if the demand isn't flooding still
If many Apple Stores got new stock today, than this isn't that bad. But if many Apple Stores don't get re-stocked this week, then it's clear that Apple didn't expect this high of a demand worldwide, and didn't procure enough manufacturing facilities or components.
my local store (just outside of Los Angeles proper) ran out of 16 gig blacks early thursday morning, 8 GBs around Friday lunch and 16Whites about 6.30 that evening. Saturday they got about 50 16Blacks which went that day. I wasn't working yesterday (I work at another store on that same mall and could watch the lines out my store's windows) but I asked one of the sales people and he had been told that another delivery (exact models unknown) was already in transit and should show up early this week. so they are trying to avoid any long stockouts.
If I were Apple, what I would have done is have the launch on July 11th with each handset costing $600, and pre-announce that in 6 weeks the handsets will be subsidized and start costing $200 with an AT&T (or whatever for your given country) lock-in. That way everyone knows what's happening, Apple can sell them online and have at-home activation (no insane lines), and a tidy extra profit is made off the first phones sold.
never happen. the cell phone companies are in this for the new customers. selling it at 'full' price would just make the phones available for folks to unlock and use with whomever, not with the contracted carrier.
so the phone services would never agree to it. and there are likely contracts that give them to power to stop such an idea.
so perhaps the best plan would be to just sell the dang things at like $500/$600 with no lock and let the customers deal with figuring out the rest. i'm sure the Apple store employees would love to not have to deal with the service set up
I expect to appear an Apple apologist, but this whole multi-platform, multi-national product launch is extremely complicated and kudos go to everyone at Apple and the cellular providers for how well things have actually gone.
agreed.
what a lot of folks here and outside seem to have forgotten is that the iphone just started last year. as a piece of equipment it is a toddler. in store activation and a world market is a baby, a new born baby at that.
so yeah there are going to be problems. there's late nights, there's spit up on your favorite shirt cause you forgot to get out a burp rag, there's upset stomachs, there's boo boos from falling down trying out this walking thing for the first time. etc
but things could have been a lot worse. and Apple by now knows what and where the issues are and will work to fix them. because that is what Apple does. but some of that fixing will take time.
And yet the stock languishes at $164.
Guaranteed to drop further when Wall Street expectations are not met.
I have little doubt that Apple will bounce back.
compare this expected drop to something like Barnes and Noble or its rival Borders Books. I have a friend that works for Borders. when he started two years ago he was awarded stock options at a price of around $25 a share. He couldn't cash them in until the end of his first year, at which point they were worth only $27 a share. He figured why both and let them die. now they would be worth about $5 a share and his employer is taking offers for someone to buy them (much like AOL and TimeWarner when AOL almost went bust). and this is after cutting back the work force (his store lost two management positions and has a hiring freeze that he tells me is company wide), plus no more overtime pay for working holidays and several other perks are gone.
Apple on the other hand did just sell over a million iphones and is probably doing a healthy amount of computer sales with their annual free ipod for college kids thing. so what's a measly $10 drop in the stock. they can turn that around just by announcing a new laptop or such.
There are around 80 countries launching the iPhone 3G this year, yet only 22 were choose from July 11th. That could be construed as staggering.
I've never used that word to mean "me first."
Where is this anti-American attitude coming from. It doesn't matter what country your from, if Apple were to release a product in one country first wouldn't you figure it would be the country of their origin. I certainly don't expect Top Gear to air on BBC America before it aires on BBC in the UK.
I think Apple initiated a launch with the most popular countries that use 3G cellphones and spent a long time figuring out how much product it would require. Did they undershoot their estimate or is this planned attempt to great more demand? I think it's the former.
Yes it was. The use of the word "example" was especially bad.
So you are saying that there are "two bit" countries in Africa? That sound quite elitist. I've been to many countries on almost all continents and no matter how destitute or poor the average populace is there is no place I've visited that I'd describe as such... not even that really filthy one (you know the one I mean).
"2 bit" countries in Africa plus India and China are the only places in the world where carriers will add 100 million + new subscribers in the next 5 years. Those carriers are extremely powerful and command cashflows and growth valuations that are the envy of AT&T and Verizon. Don't be arrogant based on ignorance.
I have to slightly disagree. I say slightly because I still agree that the best way to get an accurate answer as to if your local store has iPhones in stock is to call them,
it would be great if they had a menu item on the phone system for current avail on the phones. because that website I have been told is just the end of the day. it is not updated throughout the day so it is often wrong.
but imagine calling your local store.
"Thank you for calling the Apple Store at XX. For blah blah . . . . For current iphone availability press 7."
"Today is Monday July 21st. As of 10am. We are currently out of stock on all iphone models. Please call back as we will update this information as more stock is received"
you call back at 1pm just after a new shipment comes in
"Today is Monday July 21st. As of 12.30pm, we have the 8Gig iphone and the 16Gig in white available for purchase."
you call back that evening about 8pm
" . . . as of 8pm, we have the 8 gig iphone available for purchase"
and so on.
yes it would take a few minutes for someone to record the message but it would give accurate info and stop the poor staff from having to repeat the details for tons of callers or dealing with pissed non iphone callers that couldn't get through
It's funny that any criticism of America or Americans triggers defensive responses. They're so dominant that they can't take one on the chin?
Funny you think you're addressing 'all of America' when you make a statement like that? Are you representing the views of your country? Are you an ambassador of some stripe?
The availability checker is pretty close to live although you will need to adjust your system time to get by the code that checks your systems time to allow you to choose a state. As of a few minutes ago several stores in CA already show having stock.
I'd also like to mention that I've tested this theory. My hometown Apple store in Reno, NV showed as having 8GB phones at about 2PM on Thursday last week and sure enough I called them up and they had them in stock. I called them a few hours later when they changed to red on the availability tool and they were out. The following day (at different times) the same happened with the 16gb phones.
The largest underlying reason Apple's stock has fallen, is not due to supply / demand, economy or anything else, it is Steve Jobs health.
Apple stock has continued to fall since his keynote address and the sudden weight loss of Mr. jobs.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07212008...alk_120853.htm
the investors need to have a little faith. just because we don't know the succession plan doesn't mean there isn't one. or that the company is suddenly going to go to hell because Steve isn't at the helm. Apple is not just Steve Jobs
Tip: In my experience, the iPhone availability page is accurate (up to a certain point anyway), and you don't really have to wait until after 9pm local time to check store(s) in your area. If you manually set your computer's clock to post 9pm, and refresh the page, it will show you current availability with reasonable accuracy.
Since the new iPhone has the same plastic back as older iPods, and its prone to scratching (re: Ars Techinica iPhone 3G Review) mine will be going into a case immediately. I could care less what color the back is so I was more than happy to settle for the first available 16GB model. Using the availability tip above, I looked for Seattle area stores, noticed the store in Tukwila Southcenter just went green for 16GB White, I started towards Tukwila. Took me 20 minutes to get there, the store was busy but noticed no lines, asked one of the employees if they still had any 16GB in stock, he confirmed they just received a shipment of white 16GB 3Gs not more than an hour ago, I said perfect I'll take one. No lines, no hassle, and purchase and activation took less than 10 minutes. This is what the purchase experience should be, I promised myself that I wouldn't purchase one until I could just walk in the store and buy one, no lines no multi-hour wait.
For those of you that know you'll be putting the iPhone in a case, there's really no reason to concern yourself over the color of the plastic back, and if you want the 16GB model, go for the white model, the demand is less and they're more readily available vs. the black model.
The availability checker is pretty close to live although you will need to adjust your system time to get by the code that checks your systems time to allow you to choose a state. As of a few minutes ago several stores in CA already show having stock.
I didn't know if worked that way. Thanks for the tip and welcome to AI.
"2 bit" countries in Africa plus India and China are the only places in the world where carriers will add 100 million + new subscribers in the next 5 years. Those carriers are extremely powerful and command cashflows and growth valuations that are the envy of AT&T and Verizon. Don't be arrogant based on ignorance.
What part of my comment did you construe as arrogant toward and ignorant about Africa?
I didn't know if worked that way. Thanks for the tip and welcome to AI.
quick good tip and works but many stores in still shows out of stock, but 9.57AM PST here
availabilty tool should be available any time, hmmm not sure why someone needs wait till the dawn to purchase the iphone next day ...
It's funny that any criticism of America or Americans triggers defensive responses. They're so dominant that they can't take one on the chin?
Hmm, this is definitely the first time I have posted in defense, however I have read at least 2000 messages to this one response.
hmmmm idiots.
"2 bit" countries in Africa plus India and China are the only places in the world where carriers will add 100 million + new subscribers in the next 5 years. Those carriers are extremely powerful and command cashflows and growth valuations that are the envy of AT&T and Verizon. Don't be arrogant based on ignorance.
Yeah and they buy $20 cell phones on $5 per month plans. They represent growth but they're not buying many iPhones or other high-end product. Maybe the Mugabe and his cronies are but the populations are too poor right now.
I'm not sure what you point is about the cashflows of large corps who play in this market. They're not African companies. The Indian and Chinese companies are bigger and indigenous but so what? This isn't a game of "my country is better than yours".
What part of my comment did you construe as arrogant toward and ignorant about Africa?
You're not allowed to talk about Africa because you're white. It's the white devil that has caused Africa's problem.