Steve Jobs claimed at WWDC 2010 that iPhone 4 would reach 88 countries in September. This would by far be their fastest rollout for any handheld and of-course we were excited about the prospects of iPhone4 in India. But then, here comes the spoiler. Apple has already apologized for the pre-order mess and revealed that it has received 600,000 orders for the iPhone 4 on opening day. This is higher than ever before & certainly way more than expected.
Given the fact that Apple aims to go to 88 countries in roughly 3 months, it isn’t a surprise that we heard about 3 million iPhones being made every month. But we have a little twist to the tale here, apparently analyst Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw Inc claims that LG (who supplies the IPS displays for iPad and iPhone 4) is now able to ship only half of the 4 million displays it was expected to supply each month. That would leave Apple capable of making only 2 million iPhone 4 each month, which certainly is no where near the demand we are seeing for this gizmo.
Add to that, the iPhone 4 is coming unlocked in Europe and Canada thus increasing the grey market potential of these handsets in the Asian market. Previously complex unlocking techniques made it a little tricky for iPhones to be available in countries where the official launch was delayed. Its easier than ever now to get an unlocked iPhone 4. Apple would face the increased demand due to these leakages aswell now!
One of Apple’s UK launch partner – O2 has also put up a notification saying that the iPhone 4 supply would be limited to begin with.
“iPhone stock will be extremely limited in the UK at launch and not everybody who wants one will be able to get one straight away. We want to make sure that our existing customers get priority so until at least the end of July, only existing O2 customers will be able to get an iPhone 4 from us,”
While fans might have to wait longer to get their hands on iPhone 4, investors certainly know that Apple is doing better than its own expectations 🙂
