Conclusion. We have continued our daily monitoring of the availability of the iPhone X since its launch, and as expected it remains in short supply. We anticipate iPhone X lead times of more than 4 days to continue for the balance of 2017 and expect the iPhone X to reach supply demand equilibrium sometime in January. That’s a slight positive for the outlook for Apple’s Mar-18 quarter.
Online Lead Times Declining. We have noted an improvement in global iPhone X lead times, exiting this week at 2-3 weeks compared to 3-4 weeks in the prior 7-day stretch. We observed France and Germany be the first to see an improvement, going from 3-4 weeks to 2-3 weeks on Tuesday Nov 14th, with the rest of the world following suit on Wednesday. Details below.
In-Store Availability Average Declines Over Past Week. We’re monitoring iPhone X availability at U.S. Apple Stores daily, as well as global lead times. As of Friday morning (Nov 17th), 42% of iPhone X SKUs were available at Apple Stores in the U.S. for same day pick-up, but when rechecking for Verizon phones a few hours later, that carrier’s change alone brought the availability number down to 26%. The better measure of availability is looking at the weekly average. We found the average in-store availability this week (Nov 12-17th) was 6%, compared to the previous week (Nov 5-10th) at 8%. This change reinforces our belief that supply remains tight due to continued strong demand; phones may be available early in the day but they sell out quickly. Methodology: we checked 139 of the 271 Apple Stores in the U.S. across the four major carriers.
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