Well, it has been a long time since I did an iPhone story, so I felt it was about time.
I called Optus a couple of days ago to ask about upgrading my iPhone 3G to a new iPhone 3Gs, I was met with an answer that I had trouble believing after the last iPhone launch a year ago, “we can’t take any orders at the moment because we have no phones and don’t know when we are getting any more.”
A year ago, Optus ran out of handsets a few days into the release and it took weeks to get new stock. Just go back to posts on this site from that time and you will see me bitching about it. I believed that this wouldn’t happen again. Come on we learned from that experience didn’t we? We know now that the iPhone is a hot item that everyone wants and so we get in tons of stock, right? Wrong. According to an article on news.com.au, the world is actually in a bit of an iPhone drought.
The new iPhone 3Gs was launched on June 26 and all 5 telcos carrying the phone have run out of stock. Telstra blames a worldwide shortage while other telcos say they will have more stock in a couple of weeks. I think Telstra is actually in the right in this case as Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook has admitted that Apple can not keep up with the tremendous demand on the phone. He said, “We are currently unable to make enough iPhone 3GSs… and we’re working to address this.”
Hopefully, by the time I am ready to upgrade my iPhone Apple will have sorted out their supply lines.
