Apple is telling Apple retail employees to do their best to discourage customers without iPhone Duo pre-orders from visiting the stores to buy the foldable iPhone Duo on the day of its release, Friday, October 23, reports MacRumors.
The report says that Apple Store employees say they have been advised that even a minimally available stock of iPhone Duo stock won’t be available for walk-in purchases. They have been advised to tell customers that do not have a pre-order that visiting an Apple Store with expectations of buying the device will only end in disappointment.
Oddly, Apple’s online store still includes a blurb instructing potential iPhone Duo buyers without a pre-order confirmation to check with stores on Saturday, October 24 for pickup availability. Pickup reservations were available on the website for a short while, although it was soon removed.
As Mactrast previously reported, the Apple online store currently shows a late January delivery date for pre-orders. It doesn’t matter which carrier you select, all of the wait times are the same. The delivery date literally extended for a month in the time it took me to write the article about the delays! Within hours of the opening of pre-orders, scalpers were selling their confirmed iPhone Duo pre-orders for thousands of dollars over retail price.
Rumblings about constrained availability of the iPhone Duo began a few months back, well before the official announcement of the device. In late September, we reported that a source claiming to have knowledge of Foxconn’s supply chain told China‘s Jiemian News that final assembly yields for Apple’s first foldable iPhone were only slightly above 60% as of September 17. The source said that it could take another six months to a year for the assembly line to reach a mature yield.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has said that despite its fears that production issues could push the start of sales well into November, the company somehow decided it had enough of the foldable iPhone in stock to push ahead with the October 23 launch date. Gurman in his Power On newsletter on Sunday said that was a “major mistake.”
“Let me cut to the chase: Apple made a major mistake here,” he said. “The company knew there would be severe supply constraints but went ahead with the launch anyway, apparently prioritizing a desire to get the device on the market early in its fiscal first quarter over satisfying demand. That will disappoint many of the early adopters most eager to buy it.”
Gurman noted that Apple decided there was sufficient inventory to offer pre-orders in 70 countries simultaneously, even though it had previously planned to offer pre-orders only in the US and China.
While there is a slim chance that there may be scattered in-store availability of the iPhone Duo on launch day, I strongly discourage you from expecting to bring back victory in your teeth (as well as an iPhone Duo in your pocket) from your Apple Store visit on launch day.
