Here's why your iPhone 13 Pro Max will be delivered in a month
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We just checked, and Apple put a November 8-November 15 timeframe for a 512GB Sierra Blue iPhone 13 Pro Max delivery to the Washington D.C. area. Now we know why.
Despite that Apple is the darling child of Asian component suppliers due to the scope and stability of its orders, it is still not immune to supply chain disruptions, it seems.
According to the Financial Times and analyst reports, Apple is forced to ration production giving priority to the iPhone 13 before older models, and even then it ran into parts supply difficulties that are delaying the iPhone 13 series shipments.
iPhone 13: unaffected by chip shortages, plagued by camera upgrades
Sources from the Apple supply chain say that they initially expected no component delivery gaps despite the global chip shortages since the iPhone 13 upgrades are "incremental."
While that's true, the decision to trickle the exclusive iPhone 12 Pro Max camera down the whole iPhone 13 line has presented an unexpected production challenge for Apple.
The new for iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, and iPhone 13 Pro Sensor Shift image stabilization mechanism has to now be supplied in much larger quantities than last year when it was a Max-exclusive.
It turns out that its makers can't produce enough units due to pandemic-related disruptions, forcing the iPhone camera assembly factories in Vietnam to wait for parts hence gum up the whole iPhone 13 supply chain works.
As a consequence, even the lowly iPhone 13 mini faces a week or two of delivery delays, while for the new Sierra Blue iPhone 13 Pro Max the wait times are up to 5 weeks both in the US or China.
Apple's iPhone 13 supply woes are an opportunity for Android phone makers
As usual when it introduces new iPhone models in September, Apple sells the bulk of them in the last quarter of the year which is explicable given the proximity to the holidays shopping spree and the early adopter/upgrader phenomenon.
This time around, however, the supply chain constraints might mean way less iPhone 13 models sold than expected simply on account of the fact that Apple couldn't possibly produce them in the quantities desired. According to Taiwanese suppliers speaking for Digitimes, this presents an opening for Android makers:
The competitive pressure felt by Android from Apple is expected to slightly ease due to shortages of Apple's latest iPhone 13 lineup in Europe, the US, and Taiwan, according to sources from mobile phone channel distributors.
What does that mean? Well, Samsung can expect to sell more Galaxies and Chinese Android makers more phones than if Apple had its iPhone 13 production ducks in a row. Or, at least, Android manufacturers can expect their global market share to be preserved to a larger extent than if people could get all the iPhones they wanted as soon as they wanted.
We'll see how this trend holds as soon as Apple's quarterly earnings announcement, though emerging reports say that the camera component supply bottleneck is slowly becoming "manageable," and is expected to be resolved by mid-October.
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