The Financial Times:
Apple had originally promised delivery of the Duo by October 23, but within hours of orders opening, delivery times through Apple’s website had slipped into late January. US mobile carriers also saw delivery times for new orders pushed back.
“The pre-order demand for iPhone Duo, our first foldable iPhone, has been nothing short of extraordinary,” Apple said in a statement. “We are working hard to get this revolutionary new product into customers’ hands as quickly as possible,” it added.
Of course Apple is going to play it this way. I would too. But no one other than Apple’s operations teams knows how low the initial supply is. Just judging from my friends and my social media feeds, I think demand is quite strong for a device that starts at $2000. But I think initial supply is incredibly low.
To that point, Hartley Charlton has a nice scoop for MacRumors:
Apple Store employees told MacRumors that they have been advised that there will likely be no iPhone Duo stock available for walk-in purchases on launch day. Staff have been instructed to discourage customers without pre-orders from coming in expecting to buy the device, warning that they will be disappointed. [...]
Warnings about a constrained launch began well before Apple announced the iPhone Duo. In early September, Nikkei Asia reported that production had reached only a few hundred devices per day in late August. Further production problems emerged in late September.
I take this means Apple is going to discourage, if not disperse, anyone attempting to camp out overnight on Thursday outside Apple stores.
That said, a few hours after pre-orders opened Friday morning, ship dates went to January 25. They’re still at January 25, as I write this Sunday afternoon. So it seems Apple expects to greatly increase production in the next two months. I bet a lot of those “January 25” pre-orders wind up delivering weeks before that. Apple has a strong history of under-promising and over-delivering when new products are backordered.