Apple’s device shortages threaten record-setting holiday season
BNN Bloomberg
Shoppers looking for Apple Inc. devices this holiday season are facing a chilly reality: Most everything they might want to buy will take weeks to arrive.
Shoppers looking for Apple Inc. devices this holiday season are facing a chilly reality: Most everything they might want to buy will take weeks to arrive.
Orders for the company’s newest products -- the iPhone 13, iPad mini, ninth-generation iPad, Apple Watch Series 7 and MacBook Pro -- won’t be fulfilled until November or December. Even some older devices, including the iMac announced in April, the Mac Pro and some pricier configurations of the MacBook Air, are seeing delays.
Having to wait for an Apple product is nothing new, with the annual release of the iPhone and other hot products bringing long lines and order backlogs. But this year the delays are spread more widely. And that threatens to undercut what could be Apple’s biggest sales quarter in its history.
The company is expected to generate nearly US$120 billion in the final three months of the year, up 7 per cent from a year earlier. That’s more than the combined quarterly sales of Best Buy Co., Costco Wholesale Corp., Walt Disney Co. and Target Corp.
In a year when Apple should be enjoying one of its biggest product-upgrade cycles ever, navigating the supply crunch is the “elephant in the room,” said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.
