‘Disappearance’ of iPhones eliminates Christmas shopping queues in New York – ISTOÉ DINHEIRO

It’s almost Christmas. While the streets of New York get more crowded, the iconic Apple store on Fifth Avenue surprises with a public well below the standards of the time. Target of consumer disputes, the tables that expose iPhones, iPads and other objects of greed can be accessed without major difficulties – but only for those who just want to see the products.

Booking an appointment for a service is also much easier and it is possible to do it at the last minute. Reason? The newly launched iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max are missing. The consumer can even opt for the purple version or the 128 gigabytes (GB), less requested models, and even then it will be difficult to find them.

In other Apple stores, in New York and New Jersey, the scene is repeated. On the website, delivery is only scheduled for the end of December, that is, after Christmas. Asked about the reason for the scarcity of the “top of the line” iPhone, an Apple attendant on Fifth Avenue said he had no information.

“We had the shutdown in China, the protests,” he said, without giving his name. As for the low turnover at Apple’s flagship store in New York, he is blunt: “We don’t have the main product to sell.”

The blockade of a Foxconn factory in China, Apple’s main supplier, due to the country’s “covid zero” policy caused a shortage of iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max on the main date for purchases in the United States.

Exactly one month ago, the giant issued a statement warning that the covid-19 restrictions temporarily affected the main assembly facilities in Zhengzhou, China. At the time, he said that shipments of both models would be below sales expectations and that deliveries would take longer.

Impact

The shortage of iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max doesn’t just affect US trade. Analysts on Wall Street claim that the impact is global and affects markets such as China itself, where sales of these models may shrink by 50%, and countries in Europe.

Wedbush Securities research director Dan Ives reckons Apple is losing around $1 billion a week because of a shortage of iPhones in the company’s most important quarter. “There are about 10 million to 15 million units missing because of what we’re seeing in China,” he said. “It’s an unprecedented shortage.”

In the US, where the situation is more dramatic, the shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max has led to a rush for models in Apple stores. “We don’t know when we will receive new stock. There are days we receive it, others we don’t”, said the Apple attendant, who suggests monitoring the company’s website in the morning. After a full day of monitoring on the site, a search for a 256GB 14 Pro model outside New York returned the same response: “Not available today at 12 nearest stores.”

Faced with such difficulties, the The Wall Street Journal listed valuable tips for “applemaniacs” to guarantee the device until Christmas. The first: forget the basic black dress. Run after a purple iPhone 14 Pro. A round made by the report of the Broadcast/Estadão, Grupo Estado’s real-time news system, last week identified a single device of this model and color in a store in New York. Other tips include hunting for devices at retailers such as BestBuy.com and Target or at mobile carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

If the search is for an unlocked iPhone, one way out is to go for a refurbished one, the so-called “refurbished”. It’s kind of pre-owned and a pretty common market in the US when it comes to electronics or home appliances.

For Barclays analysts Tim Long and George Wang, despite the difficulty in finding an iPhone, Apple’s loss of participation for Android models should be limited. “Some customers are switching to entry-level iPhone 13 or 14 models due to a shortage of professional iPhone 14 models,” they say, in a report.

Relief

Foxconn said on Monday it was making efforts to normalize operations at its main iPhone factory. According to the company, in addition to reallocating production capacity to other units, it has started to “recruit new employees” and predicts that the scenario for the fourth quarter is close to market consensus.

The clarifications were given in parallel to the announcement of their monthly numbers. In November, Foxconn’s revenue plummeted 29% from October and 11% year-on-year. “Plant utilization is likely to improve in December, but we think it should still be below 50% capacity,” Barclays analysts wrote. Currently, this percentage is around 30%.

In the face of turmoil in China, Apple has accelerated its plans to get out of the country, according to the The Wall Street Journal🇧🇷 The technology giant’s idea is to advance to other countries in Asia, such as India and Vietnam. Wedbush’s Ives calculates that 40% to 50% of iPhone production could come from these two nations by 2025.

On Wall Street, the shortage of iPhones continues to pressure Apple shares, which have been registering losses. In Ives’ view, the picture should start to improve from the beginning of next year. “For now, is it a dark cloud that will be over the technology sector until the beginning of 2023?”, he predicts.

Sought, Apple did not manifest itself until the publication of this text.
The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.

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