iPhones Sold Out at Majority of Apple Stores

And we thought the buzz surrounding Apple's (AAPL) iPhone was over.

The number of news stories containing the word iPhone rose to 19,320 Tuesday, heading toward today's holiday. I suppose it was either the iPhone or Scooter Libby for many reporters on this somewhat slow news week.

The Apple Stores are finally depleting their stocks of iPhones. According to last night's tally from Apple, 97 stores are now sold out of iPhones, leaving only 68 with stock today. Your best bets at present seem to be Texas and New Jersey. Colorado, Connecticutt, Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico, and North Carolina are now the only states where all the Apple stores in the state still have iPhone stocks. I'm sure that will change as new supplies get airlifted in.

iSupply claims that an iPhone costs just $265.83 to make, yielding a 55% margins over parts costs for Apple. Samsung appears to garner more than 30% of that cost for the ships it supplies. There are no surprises there -- remember that Apple did a deal for a billion and a quarter dollars of flash memory in 2005 with Samsung, and it more recently has been shopping for 500 million Samsung NAND flash chips. Despite their competition in the mobile phone handset business, Samsung is now a critical supply partner as well.

Comments

[kent davis:]

I doubt that too many stores are sold out of iphones.
I was in the King of Prussia (Philadelphia) store Monday night and they had plenty of iphones and a line of people with problems.
Also, since you need OSX 10.4 to use a fully functional iphone, many are being returned or not activated.
And, the "Genius Bar" is experiencing heavy turn over in help because of having to service the many morons who are having trouble operating their ipods.

2007 Jul 04 08:28 AM

[reinharden:]

Kent Davis said:
> I doubt that too many stores are sold out of iphones.

Well, as of this morning, I believe that Apple was reporting less than 30 of their stores had any stock.

I will grant that 132 is "too many stores", but considering that there are only 162, it's a pretty danged large proportion. ;-)

reinharden

2007 Jul 04 03:42 PM

[rlh:]

You are so daft.

2007 Jul 04 06:31 PM

[brewer:]

Kent,

Your opinion is rather irrelevant. There are actual facts to contradict your wishful thinking.

2007 Jul 07 04:07 PM

[chinesezodi...:]

Ah, you certainly do not need OS X 'to use a fully functional iPhone', sir.
Phone itself runs OS X and safari. They come with the phone. You will not miss Windows.

2007 Jul 04 10:40 AM

[kirsch_cali...:]

As an owner of the iPhone I can verify the statements of think_tom.
Regarding supply, here on the west coast the store I visited yesterday opened at 9am with a supply and was out by 9:30. They received another delivery at noon which was out by 1pm. I believe both deliveries were around 50 phones.

2007 Jul 04 11:13 AM

[Hugo van de...:]

Talk about critical: I don't think Samsung has a problem with supplying chips, a bigger problem could be the touch displays from Balda in Germany, because Sharp seems unable to up the production. Balda however will increase production, but it is uncertain if this will lead to shortage in the shops.

2007 Jul 04 12:24 PM

[brewer:]

Funny how some windows zealots would have us believe that it's a problem when all the phones are not sold out, even though that would leave Apple unable to sell this hot item. Then, when they are all sold out, Apple is incapable of keeping up with demand, etc... Always negative.

As an investor, I rather like what I am seeing, and I hope that there will always be some stores that have some supply.

Since the profit will be deferred into the coming quarters, this thing is going to be a massive pyramid of profit for Apple.

Apple is already about 1/4 the size of Microsloth. A few years ago, it was less than 1/10. I think it will easily be 1/2 the size in the next 2 years.

Apple is very successfully using open standards to push Microsoft into irrelevancy. You can't blame the windoze investors for being upset. Their stock has done nothing but languish, especially as the 'Wow' of Vista became a massive yawn.

2007 Jul 07 04:05 PM