Gene Munster: Sold Out iPhones Suggest New iPhone Coming

Suppose that Steve Jobs has something up his sleeve, and he usually does. In a few days a new Apple advert is released featuring the iPhone2, announces a price break with a tag line "A great way to use your income tax refund!"

This puts all the units sold that are being used Asia into perspective.

I concur! I was all excited when they AT&T sold refurbs for $249 - now it's a sign to wait just a l'il bit longer! Kudos to your findings... hope it's true!

What data was used to get the 80% chance of a new phone coming?

Or did you just SWAG it?

Gerard Rotonda of Credit Suisse has stated that roughly half of iPhone users are under age 30 and 15 percent were students. Rubicon notes:
The survey showed that most iPhone users are relatively youthful technophiles; half are under age 30, and a third of them even carry more than one mobile phone. This group of customers is great for launching a product, but there aren’t enough of them to create sustained growth. The biggest question about the future of the iPhone is whether Apple can reach beyond the early adopters to generate substantial amounts of mainstream demand for the iPhone.

Seventy-five percent of iPhone users are previous Apple customers. Half of the users were iPod customers with 25 percent owning a Mac.
The iPhone increases your mobile phone bill by about 24 percent, or $228 a year. The payoff (for AT&T): The iPhone has increased AT&T’s gross service revenue by $2 billion a year, according to Rubicon estimates.
About 40 percent of the iPhone users surveyed said strongly that they want to add new software applications to their iPhones.
About 40 percent of iPhone users said the browser has trouble displaying some web pages they want to visit.

After reading this, I couldn't resist calling the Apple store here in Towson, Md.

They are in stock--in fact, they just got a shipment of 8 GB ones in today.

Still, I hope you're right. I'm one of the "I'll wait for 2.0" crowd and the wait is killing me.

I called all four Washington Apple stores daily for about more than week in late March trying to buy a 16gb model. All were sold out and expecting (but not receiving) a new shipment any day. Lead times for 16gb iPhones on apple.com were 5-7 days.

However, all Apple stores in Washington had 8gb models in stock and AT&T stores in the Seattle area have "plenty" of 16gb models in stock as well.

My suspicion is that Apple is withholding stock of 16gb models so that it can sell out/discontinue the now less desirable 8gb phones.

Not to shed useless doubt into the conversation, but notice the date that this post was retroactively posted. April 1st anyone?

Digg'd 2 days after the fact.

Actually I think there's an 80% chance your mac writers that build mac rumor suspense across popular blogs to boost their sales.

Probably this is just a price drop, and for sure it's comming a 32gb iphone on the next days!! So they must sell all 8gb iphones first, so they can still selling the 16 and 32 gb for the same prices they are today. This is obvious! The new iphone will come in june, with a stevie keynote (he must show off this new product don't you think?). So, this is an update to the 32gb, and new version will come later in june. You can write this..

32 gb in an iphone should already been shipped, since there's a 32gb ipod touch , wich is the same. It makes no sense 8 gb on an iphone with app's to install in it. We need much more space, and apple is starting to ship this new version this next week.

i dont think any new iphones are on the way because apple is required to submit any new phones to the fcc and get approved. this process takes a while but still a new phone cant come out of no where.

unless of course they worked out some secret deal with the fcc...

Got April Fools?

Even this is isn't a bad April Fools joke, why would Apple release a new iPhone now, when it is currently developing 2.0 firmware for the current model?

When iPhone sales start to fall, they'll release 2.0. Then sales will jump again. When they start to fall again after that, they'll release the "iPhone2" with 3G or whatever crap you people aren't satisfied with at the moment.

I wouldn't be surprised if inbetween these releases, they bump up the storage space too.

"The iPhone increases your mobile phone bill by about 24 percent, or $228 a year."

My bill actually went down when I switched from my POS Treo > iPhone.

The problem is that Apple has hit their production budgets. They do not want to produce any more. We found the same problem in Australia at my Apple Reseller, cannot get stock as Apple isnt producing any more s they dont want to go over budget (ie Macbook, iMac)

Just called my Apple store in Newport Beach, CA. (a few hours drive south of LA). 8GB in stock, but the guy kept repeating that they're out of 16GB iPhones.

I couldn't work up the balls to just ask him when the 3G iPhones were coming hahaha. maybe tomorrow.

posted on April 1.. 'nuff said

I highly doubt a new iphone is in our near future. Sales have grown dramatically since Apple released the upgraded 8gb and 16gb models about a month ago. I'm sure they are just a bit behind on the manufacturing side due to the high sales and the addition of iPhone availability in other countries.

This iPhone model is going to be manufactured for a while, with the newly released SDK for open software development, the iPhone is only getting stronger without the need for a new device. I would not be surprised if the introduced a iPhone with 3G or a slight chance of a smaller iPhone (iPhone nano?) but neither of these would take place at least until June 9-13 at the Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) that apple puts on every year.

I would Love an iPhone 2.0 but I think were a while off from that.

Weird way to conclude that it's 80% chance of a new iPhone comming...
Anyway, let me add my 2 cents. Easter vacation is just over and cities like New York has been packed with shoppers from Europe taking advantage of the low exchange rate of the USD (I know, I was there myself). This pretty much lead to iPhone being sold out in NYC at least...

How about an iPhone Pro?-) Perhaps with 3G and a few other features. Perhaps Intel processors?

Perhaps the release in new countries simply requires a different distribution?

Perhaps the small iPods become part of the ear buds?

Just guessing, but this is always fun when something is gong on with Apple!-)

Cheers!

I am not so sure yet. Doesn't make sense.
4 weeks ago I was trying to get a 16Gb iPhone. Had to visit two Apple Sores in the Orlando, FL area for three days in a row in able to get just one.
I finally figured out that they were receiving new units every day. They received somewhere around 20 units per day, and be sold out in the afternoon, at least the 16Gb version was always sold out. Ended up taking some free time in the morning to visit the store and be able to get my iPhone.
Again, this was a month ago.

Next time, visit an AT&T store! :)

FYI

Lone Tree, CO

Out of 16Gb units and "have been for some time".

A business magazine said it might be a way to boost sales at the end of the quarter, march 31. They record a "sale" as soon as AT&T and others buy them, not when the end user buys them. This left the Apple stores themselves short. AT&T is not short on iPhones.

The 80% comment, did you pull it out of you know where?

76% chance of an announcement this week on the new iphone

The strategy of stopping the production or holding back a produckt from the market is well known at Apple, the 8 gig Iphone is getting less popular in the US (not in europe where the 8 gig is much more popular then the 16 gig) so Apple will probably annaunce the upgraded version of the Iphone on the WWDC in early june and start selling it late june or the start of july. The phone is with all probability going to have 3G, but features like GPS are also rumored. An argument against this theory is that AT&T are building out the Wifi in the US and not the 3G and then to make a 3G iphone would offcource be stupid. So I'm waiting for the new Iphone to come out :)