iPhone shortages anticipated
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jun 13, 2007 at 5:19pm
Simon Croom, Ph.D., executive director of the Supply Chain Management Institute at the University of San Diego, says there will almost certainly be shortages of the much-hyped iPhone when it ships June 29.
In a letter to ZDNet, he had this to say: “Launching any product, especially one so hyped, means that the main task is ensuring sufficient supplies are available across the US market on launch. Undoubtedly there will be shortages, service issues and challenges for call centers set upto support users. Depending on reliability of the product, there may also be a rapid ramp up in returns and warranty claims. Using a global supply chain will likely cause more of a problem 4 – 8 weeks into the ‘first season’ of the launch. Pressure will also be felt for AT&T in terms of sales support – in particular trade ins, impact on the sales of other phones and customer’s expectations from a ‘revolutionary’ new product. The bottom line is that the launch of the iPhone is a high risk supply chain challenge.”
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
