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- The new iPhone 14 series handsets are in short supply.
- The devices were supposed to arrive in South Africa in September, but retailers are battling with supply challenges.
- The lead time for delivery is said to take up to six weeks, but is expected to ease next month.
- For more stories, go to the News24 Business front page
Supply constraints have forced long lead times in the delivery of the new generation of the Apple phone, the iPhone14, to the local market - leaving many customers frustrated.
The shortage of the new devices has hit mobile phone operators, with South Africa said to be low down on the list of the tech giant's global supply hierarchy.
The iPhone 14 officially reached local shores towards the end of September, weeks after the global launch on 7 September. A month later, vendors are still battling low stock levels of the handsets, and stock received by mobile companies has not been enough to meet local customer demand.
MTN said its iPhone devices were sourced directly from Apple, with lead times based on product availability, which can take anytime from four to six weeks.
"Our supplier, Apple, has indicated that due to increased global demand, the supply to SA is constrained with recovery on the standard iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus range during the month of November," said spokesperson Jacqui O’Sullivan.
While network providers keep on advertising the iPhone 14 series handsets, customers have expressed frustration with the long waiting times.
@MyiStoreSA @MTNza @Vodacom @TelkomZA why are you guys not having a store that has an iPhone 13 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro Max, everywhere I am told to wait for months and also there is a couple of people already on the queue, are you guys no longer on cellphone business?
— Brain ?? (@Wa_Mavu) October 13, 2022
Vodacom confirmed the shortage, saying they "expect the supply to significantly improve in the next two weeks, based on the supply plan from Apple".
The company said the shortage was not exclusive to Vodacom but impacted the market as a whole.
"We can confirm that we have experienced some supply constraints on certain models/variants across the iPhone 14 range."
An industry insider said that Apple's uses a tiered system to allocate products to the market, and SA was not at the top of the chain.
He said some retailers still did not stock of the iPhone 13, the predecessor of the current model.
Telkom also stated that it was experiencing supply shortages from the manufacturer, something which had caused backlogs across all operators.
Mobile operators offer the phone on contracts of between 24 to 36 months, with the iPhone 14 pro Max retailing between R28 000 and R41 500, depending on the data storage space.
In March, research by Statistica showed that Samsung was the top selling smartphone, with 48% of the South African market share of mobile device vendors, followed by Huawei at 24%. Apple came third with 16% of the market share.
This week, Reuters reported that Apple was cutting back production of iPhone 14 Plus and increasing the output of the more expensive iPhone 14 Pro due to lukewarm demand for the mid-range model, according to market research firm TrendForce.
It said the share of the more expensive iPhone 14 Pro series had increased to 60% of the total output from the initially planned 50%, and it could rise to 65% in the future.
