Apple Restocks: iPhones Available in 72 of 164 Stores |
Apple (AAPL) seems to have absorbed the lesson that Nintendo learned the hard way with the Wii: short supplies of a popular product are good for whetting consumer appetite, but you don't want to run so short that you leave money on the table. Yesterday the iPhone was sold out at all but two of Apple's 164 retail stores (see here). Today, according to the company's online availability tool, it's back in stock at 44% of those stores.
How many of those iPhones are fresh from the factory and how many represent returns is unclear. The New York Times today reports that most of the customers who bought two iPhones hoping to sell one for a profit on eBay or Craigslist discovered that the iPhone resale market is flooded with product. Many are paying the 10% restocking fee and bringing the iPhones they hoped to sell back within the 14-day return period. (See "iPhone Futures Prove To Be a Bad Investment. ") But the national pattern of availability suggests that a large shipment -- perhaps a plane load or two -- arrived overnight. The distribution of iPhones is too uneven to represent random returns. Stores are still sold out across the West Coast -- from California to Washington -- whereas dozens of Apple outlets on the East Coast and Midwest show iPhones in stock. The flagship store on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan still has no phones, but 10 of the 12 other stores in New York state do, including the big SoHo emporium. All nine of New Jersey's stores show availablity, as do 8 out of 13 in Florida, 5 out of 6 in Massachusetts and 3 out of 6 in Maryland. In general, it's the smaller outlets that tend to show units in stock. There are no iPhones at the big store in Cambridge, Mass., for example, but plenty in Braintree, Peobody and Hingham. Of the two stores that had iPhones yesterday, one in Pittsburgh, Penn., and the other in Tigard, Oregon, only the Pittsburgh store still has iPhones this morning. |