The Downunder iPod Drought


100 calls per day haven't done much to increase iPod supplies to more than a trickle in Australia, Australian Reseller News (ARNnet) reports.

Laudatory reviews - and a Windows version - have made Apple's iPod the top-selling MP3 player, with over 50% of the market, despite its relatively high entry fee.

NextByte, a nation-wide Australian Apple reseller, said "We've been averaging a hundred calls a day," according to one of its directors, Adam Steinhardt, who is quoted in the article.

Supply has been exceedingly limited for six weeks, Steinhardt says. Some resellers report only 25% of stock ordered comes through.

Apple marketing manager, Arno Lenior, says in the ArnNet story that ""We've been flabbergasted by demand."

Analysis: Not good for resellers, for whom peripherals are the jam next to their bread-and-butter Mac sales. And this has been the history of Apple since the Lisa. And how long did it take to get your PowerBook 17? Or your LCD iMac in 2002? In the latter case, Apple wasn't able to ramp up supply sufficiently until February-March.

Old story: Apple used to build far too many Performas in the mid-1990s, thinking the budget end of the market was worth chasing. The reality was that too few high-end Power Macs were produced - an order shortfall of about 1 million units.

Clearly, the situation is different now. But the problem of predicting demand remains. Analysts look at channel inventory and don't like to see more than 4-6 weeks. So Apple gambles on demand and hopes to get it right most of the time. It's called efficiency. Supposedly.