iPhone shortage to last 2-4 weeks, hurting businesses?

The iPhone 3G was such a big hit that there were lines for the product even for a few days after it came out. This was bound to bring shortages, and it did. In fact, Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster says, “I bet we’ll see these problems for another two to four weeks. Early demand has been more than they expected [because] they knocked it out of the park on the first weekend.” He may be on to something as Apple’s stock website is still showing low amounts in most places.

Mr. Munster says this low stock could be from unexpected, sustained demand for the iPhone, as last year there was only a large initial demand. “This is a more sustained outage, and the demand seems to be sustained,” he said. Furthermore, he points out that this year the iPhone was launched world wide, meaning less stock for the United States.

On top of this, AppleInsider has gotten there hands on a AT&T internal memo which states that “… workplace-related orders placed from Sunday the 13th onwards won’t be fulfilled for at least another 10 to 14 days.” As many of these large corporations aren’t used to large, unexpected delays, some of them are quite frustrated by the whole shortage. “I have an enterprise account and could not get an iPhone for any price,” said one buyer.

Apple and AT&T are working together to solve this issue, and a AT&T spokeswoman has said they hope to restock stores as soon as possible. This may be hard to do, as there are still quite a few people waiting in line for iPhone 3Gs at the stores each day to get their hands on the popular device. Hopefully, they get this figured out soon because large corporations tend to get angry when they don’t get what they want, when they want it.

Via [AppleInsider, Macworld]