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Apple's iPhone 5 Web Site Lead Times Down to 1 Week

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On Monday, November 26, the shipping lead times for the iPhone 5 in twenty-one of the twenty-three countries I checked had decreased from two weeks to one week. This meant that the latest shipping date had stayed constant at December 3 for the past three weeks. The two outlier countries are Belgium and Thailand which I suspect will drop to one week shortly.

The lead times for the iPhone 5 on Apple’s website have proceeded over the following shipping schedule:

September 18 to November 11           3 to 4 weeks or Nov. 26 to Dec. 3

November 12 to November 18           2 to 3 weeks or Nov. 26 to Dec. 3

November 19 to November 25           2 weeks or Dec. 3

November 26                                              1 week  or Dec. 3

There is a two phone order limit in twenty-two of the twenty-three countries with the US not having a limit.  And in Hong Kong and Japan there is still a reservation system in place with no shipping dates on the websites.

The continued shortening of the iPhone lead time goes hand in hand with my earlier posting on November 15 that also described how the major US carriers lead times had gone to immediate availability.

As long as Foxconn can make them I believe that Apple can sell 50 million iPhones in the December quarter vs. 26.9 million in the September 2012 quarter and 37 million in the December quarter last year.

Apple has been very aggressive with the number of countries they launched the iPhone 5.  The plan is to have it available in 100 countries with 240 carriers by the end of the year.  This is faster than the 4S rollout and initially led the company to allocate fewer iPhones to any individual country and carrier.