Apple’s freshly unveiled new magic rectangle was naturally destined to be in short supply and a new forecast suggests that iPhone obsessives that don’t act fast might be caught in the cold until 2018. RELEGATED TO THEIR MOTOROLA RAZRS AND THE LIKE! (Or probably just using their older model iPhones, I guess.)
MacRumours reports that current projections for iPhone X supply and demand are going to lead to a shortage of devices available to the public. In research notes written by KGI Securities Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, he forecasts that the popularity of the phone to be too much for the current “supply constraints.”
“We believe the fullscreen design and facial recognition features will drive replacement demand for the iPhone X. However, due to supply constraints, we expect market demand won’t be fully met before 1H18,” notes the trusted Apple analyst. “We revise down our forecast for 2017F iPhone X shipments from 45-50 million to around 40 million units, but we therefore revise up our 2018 iPhone X shipment estimate to 80-90 million units.”
If you don’t get your hands on an iPhone X early, consider a warning that you might be left waiting months into 2018 to snap one up. (Of course, you don’t have to buy it either. Free will and all that jazz.) As for the November 3rd launch date and wait until late October for pre-orders, Kuo explained that Apple chose that spot on the calendar for the sake of the new iPhone 8. The thinking is that there will be enough of a time buffer that the iPhone X won’t drastically eat into sales for the iPhone 8. We’ll have a better idea next year once both products have been on the market for a while.