AT&T: iPhone 4 Backordered At Our Stores Until Next Tuesday, June 29 (T, AAPL)
AT&T just put out a statement regarding Apple's new iPhone 4. — If you preordered the device on June 15, you'll be able to pick one up this Thursday, June 24, as planned. — If you didn't preorder …
Context & Ripple Effects
Three years after AT&T staged its first iPhone launch without any pre-sale system at all, the carrier is now managing the opposite problem: demand that outruns its own shelves. Preorders opened June 15, crashed ordering systems, and left many buyers facing shipments pushed to mid-July — with AT&T also having cancelled an unknown number of preorders outright days before launch.
The backorder notice lands just as distribution widens beyond the carrier: CNET reported earlier in June that Wal-Mart would carry the phone on launch day, and same-week pickups from MacRumors and Engadget show the device reaching Walmart and Best Buy shelves even as AT&T stores sit empty until June 29. The bottleneck, in other words, is specific to AT&T's channel, not Apple's supply overall.
First-order effects
- Customers who preordered on June 15 can still pick up their iPhone 4 on Thursday, June 24, but walk-in buyers face empty AT&T stores until Tuesday, June 29.
- Buyers whose preorders were cancelled by AT&T last week now compete with walk-ins for the same constrained store stock, with no stated reason from the carrier for the cancellations.
Second-order effects
- Launch-day traffic shifts toward third-party retail — Wal-Mart and Best Buy have units while AT&T does not — giving big-box retailers leverage they lacked when the carrier was the only outlet in 2007.
- Every service failure stacks onto an already strained relationship: AT&T is simultaneously defending a Microcell femtocell pitch critics call a dubious use of 3G data caps, so the backorder compounds a customer-experience deficit rather than standing alone.
Third-order effects
- If each generation opens with preorders overwhelming carrier systems, launch logistics migrate from the exclusive carrier to whichever retail channel holds inventory — eroding the practical meaning of carrier exclusivity even where the contract remains exclusive.
- Chronic launch-day scarcity pushes Apple toward broader day-one distribution and pre-order infrastructure as a product feature in itself, since unmet demand at one partner is revenue another channel captures.
The trend: iPhone launches are evolving from single-carrier controlled events into multi-retailer supply races, where demand chronically outruns any one partner's inventory and channel breadth becomes the real launch variable.