The initial sales expectations for the iPhone seem to have been deeply miscalculated: already stores around the country are reporting that they are running out of the latest generation of the iPhone and pre-orders could take weeks more to arrive. The classic case in point is Palm Beach County, where reports have just come out that Verizon stores are all out of iPhones while AT&T stores are just about sold out. Meanwhile, BestBuy has stopped accepting pre-orders because it has been unable to get its hands on the supplies to satisfy the current pace of demand. This seems to be part of a short-term issue sparked by the intense popularity of the iPhone 4S
As of now, Verizon stores have indicated that they will only get new stocks of the iPhone 4S on October 28th. Meanwhile AT&T stores reported that it would take them almost four weeks to replenish their stocks. In the meantime, consumers are getting frustrated with the waiting and tempers are running high. Unfortunately all the cursing in the world is not going to change things at the moment because it seems that distribution centers in many places seem to have very limited stocks. Apple has already mentioned that it has sold almost 4 million iPhone 4S units within the first few days of its release.
Overall, this is very good news for Apple which initially got a lot of criticism for not releasing a completely redesigned version of the iPhone. Critics immediately suggested that Apple will have to look forward to disappointing sales but the results have been anything but excellent. Only time will tell how many of the new iPhone 4S users are actually new users and not previous iPhone users. The net change is what will really reveal the popularity of the iPhone 4S in the long term. As of now, the predictions seem to be positive, especially when you consider the pre-sale polls that indicated a large number of Android and BlackBerry users were thinking of switching to the iPhone 4S.
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