iPhone 14 Pro availability continues to wane as the holiday shopping season enters full swing. Now, Apple partner Best Buy is warning that it is seeing strong demand for the flagship iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max devices, and it doesn’t have the supply to be able to keep up with that demand.
Good luck finding an iPhone 14 Pro to buy
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been following along over the last few weeks. Apple itself confirmed that iPhone 14 Pro would be in short supply this holiday shopping season due to COVID-19 restrictions in China.
Apple then released its annual guide of the “latest dates to order your holiday gifts,” and that date had already passed for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. At the time, we noted that Best Buy still seemed to have pretty ample supply of Apple’s flagship smartphones, but that appears to be coming to an end.
As reported by Reuters, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry acknowledged this demand pressure in a call with the media this week. One of the places where we’re seeing a bit of (inventory) pressure is in those higher-end iconic iPhone devices,” she said.
The shortage of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max is something that Best Buy is being forced to factor into its earnings guidance for the holiday shopping quarter this year. The company instead will rely on a “ramp up in deals and discounts” to bring more shoppers into stores.
Meanwhile, Reuters cites analyst Daniel Ives, who estimates that Apple will sell around eight million iPhone 14 units over Black Friday weekend this year. That would represent a drop of around two million units compared to the same quarter last year.
Have you run into any supply shortages so far this holiday shopping season? Let us know down in the comments.
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