The extended shipping times for a number of iPhone pre-orders might turn out to be considerably shorter than Apple’s online store is suggesting.
Within few short hours of Apple opening up iPhone 5 pre-orders buyers were being alerted that their phones wouldn’t be shipping for 1-2 weeks. Then 2-3 weeks, Then 3-4 weeks. However, numerous buyers have had their phones shipped to them despite being quoted with October delivery dates.
Tech Crunch’s own Frederic Lardinois was originally quoted with an October 5th delivery date, but was notified this past Friday that his phone had shipped and just before Apple’s own stores opened. Lardinois will most likely have his phone in-hand sometime Monday, nearly two weeks earlier than Apple promised.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an pattern to the early delivery of late pre-orders. The times and dates of expected delivery, versus actual delivery and the time the pre-order were placed are all over the place, with no apparent relation. The most likely scenario is Apple played it safe with their delivery estimates. After all, it’s better to have someone pleasantly surprised that their device is arriving weeks early, instead of weeks late.
Or Apple knew what they were doing and manipulated the shipping dates to create and artificial supply vs demand shortage thereby increase the demand and coverage for the iPhone 5.
Source: TechCrunch
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