May
22
iPhone Waiting Lists Grow; Manufacturing Glitch Slows iPhone Production.
Filed Under Cell Phones, Apple
We ran a recent survey asking Cingular wireless stores when they expected to get the iPhone in their shops, if they had a waiting list and how many names were on it. The results were interesting to say the least.
On the first question, the expected arrival date for the iPhone at Cingular stores ranged from June 15th to July generally. Some respondents claimed August and “winter 2007″ as the arrival date for the phone. Apple has cited June 15, but rumors have swirled that this date may be pushed back a bit (we agree and will get to this topic in a bit).
Our second question about wait lists resulted in 64% of stores reporting a waiting list (We called 36 stores for this survey). The remaining 36% said sales were on a “first come first serve” basis. It was apparent to us that stores reps were keeping their own waiting lists as most are compensated on commission basis it makes sense to us that waiting lists would proliferate as the launch date closes in. So it appears that 64% of Cingular reps are industrious capitalists.
The average number of names on each waiting list was 25 people (there are roughly 10,000 Cingular Wireless outlets). We did have one outlier in New York City, which we excluded from our average, that had 1,979 people on its waiting list. Another store said “we cannot give out that figure but the waiting list is running into the thousands”, another store reported that the number of calls for the phone was “indeterminable” as the numbers were massive.
Our take on our quick survey is that demand for the iPhone is probably going to surprise even Apple fanatics in the early days. We expect sell-outs and complaints about lack of availability of the phone. On this point, we have stumbled across some info that leads us to beleive that HonHai is having trouble manufacturing to schedule and is running behind due to some part delays. It appears that the initial 12 million unit run rate will not be available by June 15. Get your iPhone if you can…
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23 Responses to “iPhone Waiting Lists Grow; Manufacturing Glitch Slows iPhone Production.”
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Please provide a link to where Apple cites June 15. Beginning in January, all official statements have said “June” or “Late June”. No specific date has been given.
REPLY TO NEUROTIC NOMAD:
You are correct in that our use of the word “official” may be somewhat misleadiing. We are relying on a document purported to be “official” that is posted on http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2007/05/05/apple-iphone-to-launch-june-15th/
and it says
“According to an official letter sent to all corporate AT&T employees, the Apple iPhone launch will take place on June 15th with the launch period extended until the 15th of July. AT&T isn’t even approving their employees from taking any vacations during that timeframe…”
Sorry for the confusion, we will reference more specifically next time.
Wow… great “reporting.” In addition to Apple mentioning late June, as well as Apple reiterating their release date after the bogus “push-back” from Engadget (more great “reporting”), AT&T released an internal memo that forbid any o f their stores from keeping waiting lists. So the “industrious capitalists” are actually cheating store operators, whereas your “dunderheads” are those actually listening to their parent corporation. You’re an idiot.
REPLY TO DL:
Well you may be quite right on my (our) status as humans. That said, we just run the surveys and report the results. They are taking waiting lists. Whether it is right or not I won’t judge. As we keep saying, feel free to replicate the survey yourself - 32 Cingular (AT&T Wireless) stores and aks if they have a waiting list.
Thanks for the feedback.
Reply to Casey’s Reply to DL:
“That said, we just run the surveys and report the results.”
No, you did more than that. You made an interpretation about the relative intelligence of your survey responders. DL was right to correct you.
REPLY TO THOMPSON:
Point well taken. We’ll work to keep those interjections out of future posts.
-Casey
First of all, there’s no information on this site regarding who channelcheckers is, so why should anyone accept your credibility in putting forth this “story”?
If anyone bothered checking this site, they’d see it is virtually an empty shell and barely contains any “information” at all, real or otherwise, and that “you” have no credible information about ANYTHING. It’s possible that you are a paid shill for an opposing party but, at the very least, you are certainly manufacturing some links for yourself by piggybacking on one of the hottest consumer product releases in years.
The last paragraph of your “story” is complete hot air: “…we expect…complaints about lack of availability…we have stumbled across some info that leads us to believe that HonHai is having trouble…and is running behind…it appears that the…run rate will not be available by June 15…get your iPhone if you can.”
Again, who are the “we” on this rumor site? What are your credentials and qualifications that would allow you to have valid expectations, estimates, or any other forward-looking statements about this or any other product?
You should rethink your plan, quit deceptively portraying yourself as doing legitimate research while spreading unfounded rumors, and rename your site therealitycheckers.
First off the ATT June 15 - July 15 does not mean that the phone will launch on those days, but could. In fact what MOST ATT employees believe is that Apple has mentioned that this is when more information will be released to ATT allowing ATT employees to start online training for the product. This online trainining may infact extend into JULY before any iphones are actually available to the public. ATT internal best guess for release of the product is June 26. Employees will be training the week prior and all stores will have “some” iphone product in stock by July 8th.
REPLY TO ANONYMOUS,
Well your post if full of vigor which is nice. The final sentence made me (us) laugh quite a bit. I will also say that we are quite excited to get our readership back to an active level. The look of the web site - a shell - as you say is due to the fact that we just moved it to a new hosting company - AN Hosting in Chicago - and are porting over our old archives now. So I agree it looks a little bare bones but Mac Daily New has published plenty of our stuff in the past - the site was started in August of 2006.
The survey we ran and the data behind is very real. The “sources” on the manufacturing delays are very credible. We cannot prove that to you now but time and pending news is our ally in this venture. We are very comfortable putting our info out to be attacked until we prove our worth. Please keep checking back. We appreciate the visit and hope you’ll become a consistent visitor. Your feedback - while somewhat negative today - is appreciated and we look forward to changing your mind about us and our site.
-Casey
REPLY TO NELSON BOHKS
Nelson thanks for the input and information. I assume your information is accurate but do not see it as contradictory to our statement which is just that we have learned (from sources we trust) that manufacturing is running a little behind schedule. Our conclusion on that is simply that scarcity premium in the product is likely to be even higher than anticipated and heightened by the lower unit volumes available on the first days of availability - whatever those may be.
Thanks for the input.
-Casey
Casey, I would caution you to be very careful in your claims and assertions about when Apple will deliver the iPhone. I hope you have kept up with the blowback against Engadget for getting the false delivery date email completely wrong. One check of one “source” does not make it safe to run with a story, something that is becoming all too common with bloggers. As you may know, recent court decisions have categorized bloggers in the same vein as journalists, for all the good and ill that this infers. The difference, as many professional journalists will tell you, is that newspapers and television networks will hold a story until they are absolutely certain that their facts are correct.
If you are running fast and loose with the truth, be careful. A company like Apple will have better access to the real shipping dates, and have been surprisingly forthright about expected shipping schedules of late. What you are asserting here could have a material impact on Apple and AT&T’s sales of the iPhone. And unless you have access to legal heavyweights on the level of these two companies, you are treading into very dangerous territory.
Remember: it’s ready-aim-fire, NOT ready-fire-aim.
Please consider this not a warning, but a caution to be absolutely certain of your facts. The desire to be first to publish can be very seductive, but it can also be a very dangerous and slippery slope.
REPLY TO CLUE-BY-FOUR,
Thanks for the input. I don’t think our article implies there will be a problem with shipment volumes for the iPhone. In fact I would suggest that demand looks beyond robust as evidenced by our finding that many stores are keeping long waiting lists for the device (apparently against company edicts as I have been informed of repeatedly by eager posters).
As for our source on the waiting lists we are 100% confident in those data points. As to the manufacturing delay, our only point was to highlight that only 10M devices might be available early on to meet the heavy demand as opposed to the 12M that some news sites have reported Apple is actually producing.
That said we appreciate the wordly advice. Since our data is predominatly field data that we gather we generally are unconcerned with corporate positions on information. Our data is verifiable and we track it. I would suggest that corporations will find our site informative about their own operations over time since we will undoubtedly be polling many of their line employees about basic things like “do you have a waiting list for the iphone?”.
We appreciate the information and the feedback and will take your advice to heart. Please comment more on coming stories.
We know that it is indeed not AT&T company policy to allow waiting lists. However, this memo also implies something interesting: That waiting lists have been established. Nobody is going to take the time to send a memo saying waiting lists are not allowed if there is not interest from the public in being put on such a list. The memo implies that waiting lists already exist and that AT&T wants to stop them.
Unfortunately, from the point of view of the retailer, there is no way in the world they can call back all these nice customers, some of who may have even put down deposits, and tell them the waiting list is not valid. So now that there is a waiting list, there’s no way to put the cat back into the bag.
So I have no qualms about accepting the validity of the Channel Checkers’ research. The AT&T memo is evidence that there are waiting lists, and so calling around and asking about lists is a valid research tactic, and good, original reporting.
I’m posting this, in fact, mainly to confirm that I think we should appreciate people, even unknown ones, who look at something, figure out what it really means, and decide to do some original research. Isn’t the complaint the MSM has about blogs that they don’t do original research? Well, here we are, people who have, and we insult them instead of appreciating the work that went into this.
There was in fact an AT&T memo that implied that June 15th was a likely release date. However, this was not a promise from Apple and should not be interpreted as such. It seems fair to me that much work is still being done on the software and it would surely not be impossible for manufacturing problems to arise. I remember many new Apple products, such as the G5, that were promised around such and such a date, but actually appeared 2-4 weeks later.
I have no way of determining the channel checkers’ credentials or connections with suppliers, and it’s even possible that they have genuine connections but the contact doesn’t really know what he’s talking about in this instance.
In the end, the iPhone is not going to be judged on its release date, however exciting that may be right now. It will be judged on how much we, its customers, enjoy using it. I support a delay in its production if that will make it a better product in the end.
D
PS Any rumors on whether it will have a SSH client available, either natively or third party?
I wish online journalists would learn the difference between ‘demand greater than supply’ and ‘production problems’. None of you know how many units are actually being produced at any given time.
To make the statement that “HonHai is having trouble manufacturing to schedule and is running behind” implies that you, and/or your staff, have knowledge what Honhai’s schedule is. You don’t.
Without actual knowledge of what proeduction numbers are, or the schedule Honhai is supposed to be producing to, any statement regarding production is nothing more than conjecture based on incomplete facts.
Your willingness to make such conjecture, as you did regarding the intelligence of those that followed Company policy, doesn’t generate any trust (on my part) in your ’surveys’.
Over a period of three years I have developed my own sources for channel information, and I can unequivocably state than no one outside of Apple’s inner circle has the information needed to make ‘production problem’ statements, and they never talk.
REPLY TO GREGG THURMAN
Plenty of people are aware of what production targets for the iPhone are. Our sources work in the logistics chain for Apple. As noted by David Dennis in this section it is not a suprise nor really a criticism of Apple if production runs a little behind schedule.
I think our point in the article is that even without any lags in production we would surmise from the apparently controversial waiting lists that demand appears to be extremely strong for the iPhone. So any production snags no matter how small will serve to limit supply to an extent and increase the imbalance between demand (strong) and supply (limited initially).
You make a good point about our disparaing remarks hurting the credibility of the story and I believe on multiple posts we have said we would work to keep those types of comments out of future posts.
We appreciate your comments and hope you’ll give our surveys an opportunity to inform you. I beleive you’ll be surprised by the depth range and accuracy of them over time.
-Casey
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