While Apple and AT&T may have bungled pre-orders for the iPhone 4 because of high traffic to their websites, it doesn’t appear that there will be any long-term shortages of the device.
According to Francis Sideco, principal analyst of wireless communications for iSuppli, there aren’t any glaring shortages in components for Apple’s new device.
From processors to chipsets, things look pretty good from what Sideco can see. “Potentially if they’re having some greater-than-expected 3G orders on the iPad, they could be having to split available volumes there, but from what I can detect from my channel checks, there aren’t any issues there,” he says.
The only other thing that could slow production going forward was some tightness in availability of Flash memory, but Sideco says that’s not specific to Apple.
When asked whether Apple might have been surprised by the record number of pre-orders, Sideco says that opening weekend sales of the iPhone have routinely hit 1 million. “You would think that they’d be pretty well prepared. I don’t think they’d choke on that number,” Sideco says, referring to the 600,000 pre-orders reported by Apple and AT&T yesterday.