Apple resellers left to pick bones of dwindling iPad stocks Apple has run out of iPads stocks worldwide, before the third-generation slab of fondling loveliness has even hit store shelves. The devices were available for pre-order last week on Apple's website with shipping date in the US set for 16 March but that has slipped by three days. Expectant owners in other early release …
"Apple has run out of iPads stocks worldwide, before the third-generation slab of fondling loveliness has even hit store shelves."
Should read
"Apple has under produced initial iPads to create an artificial shortage and thus get lots of free advertising in from various press outlets. It also makes people think that everyone want one so they must be good, which leads the clueless drones into demanding something that they don't need, don't understand and that ties them into buying Apple products and services for ever more."
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Do you not think Apple would like to sell as many as they can as soon as possible? Seems like that is the best way forward for a business.
If Apple waited until they had enough stock to fill the initial demand, they would either be stockpiling 'new ipads' for months before launch (pushing back launch), or they would have to pay much more to Foxconn to manufacture more in a shorter space of time.
Either way it is a balance between having an inefficient or an insufficient capacity to produce.
Normally it takes desirable Apple devices a good couple of months after a product starts shipping to become 'fully available' in the app store. If you assume that they have been running production of the 'new ipad' for 2 months prior to launch, then in order to meet demand at launch they would have needed either to delay the launch for 2 months, or to have had double the production capacity prior to launch.
So there are good technical reasons why a highly desired device will always be difficult to lay your hands on at launch. It's not necessarily an Apple thing - look at the RasberryPI - although I'm sure they do love the hype.
How about, "Apple had as many made as was physically possible given the timeframe, but that just wasn't enough to cover the initial demand". I know, that's very boring and far too lacking in conspiracy theories and irrational hatred to be a good explanation, but it's all I could come up with.
Considering that Tim Cooks experience was in supply chain it's surprising that it appears to be as bad as it is.
How many did apple have in stock before the announcement?
Given the fact that they couldn't get them out of the factory quick enough, I wonder where exactly the blame lies
http://www.itproportal.com/2012/03/07/ipad-3-shipments-from-china-overwhelm-airfreight-companies-/
I can see why cynical observers would speculate that apple has deliberately created an artificial shortage. I'm not sure why they'd do that when they seem able to sell as many as they can make when stocks are plentiful. There's more to this than meets the eye.
You may not have noticed that it will still be "estimating" a delivery of 16th March - suspect folks are under strict orders not to deliver before then - I too got a dispatch notice over the weekend.
It would be nice if they accidentally slipped it onto my doormat early, but I won't count on it.
You have to balance a couple of things here. On the one hand, you need to make enough to satisfy initial demand, while factoring in the cost of updating them all to the latest stable iOS release and storing them until needed. But you don't want to tool up too much capacity to meet that initial demand, as that leads to excess capacity later when demand tails off.
I guess Apple are accepting they will disappoint a few people by not having enough stock to meet that initial demand while not having wasted excess capacity later.
There's only so many units of something you can produce and store in secret before it starts become a major hassle in terms of leaked information before announcing & logistics involved etc. If you can meet even 75% of demand on launch day, and make sure all those not shipped on launch day have their product within a couple of weeks, you're doing well really.
Does anyone really think that Samsung et al would expect launch day demand to be 1 million units, so ensure they have 1.2 million units sitting there to cover launch and a period slightly after? Of course they wouldn't.
You manufacture what you know you will move quickly, comfortably. And have a second batch lined up to ship shortly afterwards. And then a third... and then demand will have tailed off to a "normal" level ... until November.
If you don't have devices enough to sell, and want to stop people deciding that they want a tablet, but because there's no iPad (1, 2, 3 the number it's irrelevant) available so let me look elsewhere (Oh, what's the company that Apple is suing?), what you do? "Folks, the demand it's to high (not) but be patient and you will get one!". Err, what else you have do to blind people from thinking that 600+ it's an outrageous amount of money to spend on a toy?
All of these stories about Apple's supply chain incompetence (as though they are the first company to intentionally limit supply to stoke demand) only read through as "their products are so damn good that they can't make them fast enough." They just turned a technical upgrade into the second coming.
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After seeing what the iPad3 contains, I'm still happy with my first gen iPad, the battery life is still amazing, there are one or two apps that demand an ipad2, but I have no desire to create music or edit video's on a tablet, I'm guessing the HD res is for 20 year old eyes, and for serious game playing I have my desktop and 42 inch TV.
This allows the dust to settle and see what's forthcoming, the third Asus Transformer will be out in a month or two, Samsung may release a third tablet with a working SD slot (I def prefer 4:3 format over widescreen, yet most Android tabs are widescreen (Prime) or SD slotless (Xoom2)).
As for the shortage thing, I believe it's called marketing. A rare thing is a desirable thing.
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