There's no way they could make and ship anything like enough units for a multinational launch in two weeks. They will have put a some by for the EU launch, or it will be very far from a PR success. if you're actually planning to manage demand for PR purposes, you need it to be well judged. You need to have just few enough units so most people have them but not everyone gets one and you can report good sales numbers. if you vastly undersupply the demand, you just get called an idiot and piss all your customers off.

Jon

Did I not read that Apple have 60% of the worlds production of 10" touch screens? I don't know how much that is but it must be a finite number.

I presume that they have to tool up for anticipated demand for the product for the years life cycle. Thus if they expect to sell 12 million over the whole year then they tool up to make 1 million a month provided that is that 1 million a month can actually be produced. However there will be more demand at the start of the cycle than at the end. Thus there is almost bound to be shortages early on.

The alternative is that you make so many ahead of launch that you can meet demand. Several months of advance production stored up before launch. What if then your competitors bring out a better product? You are stuck holding stock. I wonder if the x-oom is in this position.

It is a definite balancing act. Though if there is a design fault like the aerial on the iPhone 4 then too many can result in a huge loss. Though too few and they have PR problems, though immeasurably easier than if they have too many.

I still think that aerial thing is a bit of a myth.

Nothing has changed, they are still selling as fast as they can make them and of the dozens of friends I know that has a 4 none have reported a problem.

CC

*raises hand*

Mark

Nope. Seen it first hand. My brothers iPhone 4. He hates me because I told him to buy one.

Last i remember before all the furore blew over, was that you could attenuate the signal significantly by holding it 'wrong', but for it to actually lose signal entirely required you to do so when the signal strength was fairly low anyway i.e. it's pretty situational. It's also not limited to the iPhone 4 - once it was found that had it, people tried similar things with other phones and quite a few showed similar symptoms, although not to as great a degree.

It is definitely a design issue but the whole thing was a huge storm in a teacup.

Actually it was demonstrable but only if you did it right. I saw it happen with an acquaintances iPhone. That said I would not have been deterred, the bumper offer would have appeased me easily. It was the lack of white iPhones that saved me.

It was a huge problem for me as I live in a low signal area. The case sorted it out fine for me.

I sit (cleaning my whiskers) corrected..

CC

Just to clarify (if clarification was needed) I raised my hand above to indicate I have never had the alleged signal issue that other iPhone 4 users appear that have suffered from.
(8+)

Mark

Likewise. But I do have a protective case anyway.

I think that some people are remarkably fussy. None of my friends have iPhones that exhibit any such problems. It was a fault but not that significant. As for it deterring me from getting an iPad 2 then no it has not influenced me at all.

I could make my iPhone do the signal thing to the point where it would lose the netowrk altogether but I had to hold it in a certain way with both hands for at least 30 seconds to a minute.

Never had the signal problem with normal use.

My Nokia usually gets a much better signal than my HTC. My HTC loses the WiFi signal if I hold it at the top, and loses the phone signal if I hold it at the bottom. I've figured out a kind of Vulcan nerve pinch which seems to work, although it does make me look like a freak. Incidently, I have a "bumper" type cover, which ruins the GPS signal...