Prepaid subscribers expecting to pick up the new iPhone 5S from O2 UK later this week may need to wait a little longer. It appears that the carrier only has very limited quantity of the device in its inventory. Various official O2 stores in the United Kingdom confirm that they won’t be able to offer the iPhone 5S on Friday, instead, they’ll continue taking pre-orders of the device.
It isn’t clear why the O2 UK has such a limited stock of the device; perhaps other carriers are getting higher prioritisations. Representatives from the company also said that it may take up to a couple of months for O2 UK to get new stock.
Delays are usually caused by high demand and this is always the case with earlier iOS devices. Analysts said that Apple will manufacture between 5 to 10 million units iPhone 5S this quarter. Fingerprint scanner and the new A7 64-bit processor may contribute to slow downs in production process, although they may not cause dire consequences to users.
In marketing perspective, limited stock could have good impact to Apple’s sales; since this can build up expectation and anticipation among users. Apple just can’t do anything wrong, even manufacturing delays would be considered as “fashionably late” by hard-core fans.
