Iphone 7 ?

[Tycho]

Rawwr said:

kev1974 said:

I guess they really are drip feeding just 10 or 20 a day out at each store.

Doesn't the cynical part of your mind kick-in and question that?

I strongly suspect that creating false, extended demand will work wonders for their next press release.

IIRC Nintendo used to do this all the time when they released consoles. Creates quite a buzz about the product that the press are only too happy to jump on.

[Blown2CV]

why does it have to be a conspiracy, and not just exciteable tools getting upset because there isn't stock of something which is in huge demand? They're not going to build one billion handsets just in case are they? Amazes how people think this is an evil corporation thing and not just a demand and supply thing. I'm sure that there are people that also think it's Apple's fault still, for making you want their products so much

[malks222]

but its not just supply and demand, apple have been selling iphones for 9 years now, they will know the figures of each that are sold and over what sort of time frame.

if they wanted to they could easily have enough products in stores and sitting with networks to satisfy all the demand. but they choose not too, they choose to drip feed them to the market, keep enough people happy, but keep the 'hype' and keep people thinking they are hard to get hold of, so must be amazing and the latest shiny gadget to have. also as others have mentioned- also limit the lower capacity ones so when people do get the chance they might manage to get them to buy the more expensive models.

imagine how flat the product release would be if they
- confirmed all the 'leaks' well ahead of time
- let tech people review
- get reviews of- aye its slightly better/ faster, but doesn't look much different
- didn't put on the product launch show
- released the product and everyone that wanted one, got one

does any other phone/tablet/ tech product manage to get a 50 page thread on a car forum?!?

[Leithen]

malks222 said:

but its not just supply and demand, apple have been selling iphones for 9 years now, they will know the figures of each that are sold and over what sort of time frame.

if they wanted to they could easily have enough products in stores and sitting with networks to satisfy all the demand. but they choose not too, they choose to drip feed them to the market, keep enough people happy, but keep the 'hype' and keep people thinking they are hard to get hold of, so must be amazing and the latest shiny gadget to have. also as others have mentioned- also limit the lower capacity ones so when people do get the chance they might manage to get them to buy the more expensive models.

You'd think that would be obviously true on the face of it.

But drill down into the numbers involved and then it starts to become somewhat more difficult to achieve.

They sell circa 120 Million of the little fkers every year. Lets estimate that 70% of those are the new model. So they are going to need to produce 84 Million + over 12 months. Lets call it 13 months to allow new model stocking moving towards quick supply turnaround at the year end. That's 6.5Million phones per month, 216,0000 a day, roughly 9000 an hour.

Then consider that production will be slower to begin with and ramp up through the year as quality is controlled and improved. So production is likely to be half initially, 5000 per hour, 120,000 per day.

Then also factor in that the initial launch weekend sees sales of 13 Million +. That's a 100 days worth of production just to satisfy a weekend....

The clincher is that it's not a stamped car part. It's a precision piece of electronics that would have customers and press wetting themselves if there were any obvious flaws in it's construction or operation....

[Blown2CV]

malks222 said:

but its not just supply and demand, apple have been selling iphones for 9 years now, they will know the figures of each that are sold and over what sort of time frame.

if they wanted to they could easily have enough products in stores and sitting with networks to satisfy all the demand. but they choose not too, they choose to drip feed them to the market, keep enough people happy, but keep the 'hype' and keep people thinking they are hard to get hold of, so must be amazing and the latest shiny gadget to have. also as others have mentioned- also limit the lower capacity ones so when people do get the chance they might manage to get them to buy the more expensive models.

imagine how flat the product release would be if they
- confirmed all the 'leaks' well ahead of time
- let tech people review
- get reviews of- aye its slightly better/ faster, but doesn't look much different
- didn't put on the product launch show
- released the product and everyone that wanted one, got one

does any other phone/tablet/ tech product manage to get a 50 page thread on a car forum?!?

they don't fking drip-feed them you melodramatic tool. You're having to wait a matter of days, grow up. I had to wait 6 months for my car to be built, but you didn't catch me crying on forums and calling conspiracy.

[malks222]

Blown2CV said:

they don't fking drip-feed them you melodramatic tool. You're having to wait a matter of days, grow up. I had to wait 6 months for my car to be built, but you didn't catch me crying on forums and calling conspiracy.

thanks for calling me a melodramatic tool, don't think my reply warranted that. but hey ho.

I agree, waiting a matter of days or weeks is hardly the end of the world. Its always the same when apple release new phones. but you have to agree that at least some of the 'hype'/ supply is down to apple manipulating it?

and I'm not surprised a car takes 6months to be delivered seeing you can spec the entire car to what you want. hardly comparing like for like on delivery schedule!

[Rawwr]

Blown2CV said:

they don't fking drip-feed them you melodramatic tool. You're having to wait a matter of days, grow up. I had to wait 6 months for my car to be built, but you didn't catch me crying on forums and calling conspiracy.

It's not a conspiracy, it's a perfectly valid tactic.

You're either extremely naïve or a complete tool.

[Rawwr]

Or both, of course.

[Blown2CV]

the point is it the poor consumer doesn't always have to be the victim of the big horrible man, and there doesn't have to be something they're hiding from us every single fking time. Is it completely implausible that they were just going to measure demand before they go and build a billion of them? Is it really that bad that anyone has to wait a few days? Or is it just looking for someone else to blame? Maybe there isn't anything secret going on... just maybe... nah that doesn't fit the narrative it must be the fking illuminati.

[Efbe]

Blown2CV said:

the point is it the poor consumer doesn't always have to be the victim of the big horrible man, and there doesn't have to be something they're hiding from us every single fking time. Is it completely implausible that they were just going to measure demand before they go and build a billion of them? Is it really that bad that anyone has to wait a few days? Or is it just looking for someone else to blame? Maybe there isn't anything secret going on... just maybe... nah that doesn't fit the narrative it must be the fking illuminati.

you know what. you are completely right.

Apple have had ages to build these devices, and have not been able to build them fast enough, however right now have just remembered, and put thousands upon thousands more people /factories/machines into operation and are able to churn out thousands per day, for which they are shipping daily, in a nice steady stream which exactly matches this tactic they always use.

[Blown2CV]

Efbe said:

Blown2CV said:

the point is it the poor consumer doesn't always have to be the victim of the big horrible man, and there doesn't have to be something they're hiding from us every single fking time. Is it completely implausible that they were just going to measure demand before they go and build a billion of them? Is it really that bad that anyone has to wait a few days? Or is it just looking for someone else to blame? Maybe there isn't anything secret going on... just maybe... nah that doesn't fit the narrative it must be the fking illuminati.

you know what. you are completely right.

Apple have had ages to build these devices, and have not been able to build them fast enough, however right now have just remembered, and put thousands upon thousands more people /factories/machines into operation and are able to churn out thousands per day, for which they are shipping daily, in a nice steady stream which exactly matches this tactic they always use.

maybe they don't want to build a fkload for day 1 in case this is the time people decide not to buy it. Especially as they are well aware (internally) that the 7 is a minor update. It's not so hard to gauge. The barely negative impact of customers having to wait versus the massive, massive share price impact of having stloads of unshifted units. Plus you can't just scale up production and scale it back down again to match these huge spikes. What the hell would be the point in building a factory ten times bigger when it only gets close to capacity for one month a year? The sheer fact you are frustrated means you likely haven't given up on the idea of waiting for one. Otherwise it wouldn't matter, right? Apple only have to give a st if you decide you're not going to buy one, because they know fine well you'll be all please and placated when it finally arrives.

[Leithen]

IIRC the iPhone is the largest unit selling electronic device in history, certainly on a year on year basis.

The logistics behind designing, finalising, producing, assembling, packaging and delivering circa 15 million units for the first week of sales would make most production managers around the world tremble with fear.

[CoolHands]

It's an exorbitant price. But fk it, people used to spend £4 grand on a flat screen telly or £1500 on a vcr. At least it does a lot, and let's be honest, is really nicely made.

[leglessAlex]

I went and had a look at it today, I can see why some people aren't so keen on upgrading their 6 or 6S. Usually, even though I haven't had an iPhone for a long time, I go to the Apple store after a non-S release and I expect to be quite interested when I pick up the device. That didn't really happen this time, the fact it's (mostly) the same design as last time really does take away from it a bit.

The other thing I noticed is that the Jet Black phones are all crazily scratched already even though they've only been on display a week, it even feels like quite a soft material. This isn't unexpected and even Apple themselves warn about it but I'm surprised they looked like that, that quickly. It just didn't seem very well thought through and quite un-Apple like.

I was very impressed with the home button though, it really does feel like you're clicking it.

[Efbe]

Blown2CV said:

maybe they don't want to build a fkload for day 1 in case this is the time people decide not to buy it. Especially as they are well aware (internally) that the 7 is a minor update. It's not so hard to gauge. The barely negative impact of customers having to wait versus the massive, massive share price impact of having stloads of unshifted units. Plus you can't just scale up production and scale it back down again to match these huge spikes. What the hell would be the point in building a factory ten times bigger when it only gets close to capacity for one month a year? The sheer fact you are frustrated means you likely haven't given up on the idea of waiting for one. Otherwise it wouldn't matter, right? Apple only have to give a st if you decide you're not going to buy one, because they know fine well you'll be all please and placated when it finally arrives.

Not sure if thick or purposefully missing the point of how many they are seemingly able to produce per day.

These are not sausages, they take time to build, at a guess at least 15 hours of labour per device, at a conservative estimate of 4 million devices per day, with a working day of 10 hours would mean they have 6 million factory workers making iphone 7s, not to mention the billions spent on machinery to support this.

still sound right to you?

[robsa]

Efbe said:

you know what. you are completely right.

Apple have had ages to build these devices, and have not been able to build them fast enough, however right now have just remembered, and put thousands upon thousands more people /factories/machines into operation and are able to churn out thousands per day, for which they are shipping daily, in a nice steady stream which exactly matches this tactic they always use.

Apple sold around 200 MILLION iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (combined) in the opening weekend of their release. Have you stopped to think about the logistics of building that many IDENTICAL phones (colour/memory excepted) and delivering them to stores, in the right quantities, ready for ONE weekend?

This time around, most business experts predicted sales would be slower - but of course nobody knows by how much because... guess what? It's quite difficult to predict the sales of an item that can potentially sell 200 million units in two days, or perhaps only 10 million units if it's a flop.

Apple had, according to industry rumour, had some supply problems with the second lens for the iPhone 7 plus, and that would seem to be borne out from the shortages of the plus. But, even so, how many do you build in preparation for the opening weekend? What capacity and what colour? Are the new black colours going to be a hit or a flop?

As it turned out, it's estimated that they sold about 120 million. Perhaps if you had been there to advise them they would have managed it better, and not had these problems. I would suggest you give Jony a call, I'm sure him and Timbo wil be so grateful for your insight that they willl pop you on the board. Jony's mobile number is zzzzzzzzz.....

[malks222]

robsa said:

Apple sold around 200 MILLION iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (combined) in the opening weekend of their release. Have you stopped to think about the logistics of building that many IDENTICAL phones (colour/memory excepted) and delivering them to stores, in the right quantities, ready for ONE weekend?

they didn't sell anywhere near 200million on opening weekend- it was 10million as per the apple press release at the time

https://www.apple.com/uk/pr/library/2014/09/22Firs...

[Efbe]

robsa said:

Apple sold around 200 MILLION iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (combined) in the opening weekend of their release. Have you stopped to think about the logistics of building that many IDENTICAL phones (colour/memory excepted) and delivering them to stores, in the right quantities, ready for ONE weekend?

This time around, most business experts predicted sales would be slower - but of course nobody knows by how much because... guess what? It's quite difficult to predict the sales of an item that can potentially sell 200 million units in two days, or perhaps only 10 million units if it's a flop.

Apple had, according to industry rumour, had some supply problems with the second lens for the iPhone 7 plus, and that would seem to be borne out from the shortages of the plus. But, even so, how many do you build in preparation for the opening weekend? What capacity and what colour? Are the new black colours going to be a hit or a flop?

As it turned out, it's estimated that they sold about 120 million. Perhaps if you had been there to advise them they would have managed it better, and not had these problems. I would suggest you give Jony a call, I'm sure him and Timbo wil be so grateful for your insight that they willl pop you on the board. Jony's mobile number is zzzzzzzzz.....

oh my god, seriously. what is wrong with you people.
completely missing the point, which is that Apple could not be producing the supply of iphones day by day to sell, so therefore must be drip feeding stock already produced purposefully. it's not frickin rocket science, it's not even an unheard of phenomenon, I have no idea why it would come as a surprise.

[rat840771]

At the grand arcade in Cambridge they do drip feed, i asked the apple man as i was waiting for the store to open last Sunday. He said that each night they get a quota delivered. I presume that quota is loaded onto the website at 6.00am so you can reserve.

Within a minute the jet black was gone, funnily enough the guy opposite me at the store must have claimed that jet black, as he did the same as me and set his alarm for 6.00am.

[Efbe]

rat840771 said:

At the grand arcade in Cambridge they do drip feed, i asked the apple man as i was waiting for the store to open last Sunday. He said that each night they get a quota delivered. I presume that quota is loaded onto the website at 6.00am so you can reserve.

Within a minute the jet black was gone, funnily enough the guy opposite me at the store must have claimed that jet black, as he did the same as me and set his alarm for 6.00am.

it's a clever tactic, I expect it means Apple can sell more of the high capacity, more expensive phones as people become more desperate to get the colour/phone they want, and probably ensures the other colours sell out evenly in comparison to their overall stock as well.