Wait times for the iPhone 14 Pro stretch past 5 weeks - CBS News

Holiday shoppers buying an iPhone 14 Pro contiguous should beryllium prepared to wait, and hold immoderate more, to get their hands connected the premium device.

According to Counterpoint Research, hold times for the iPhone 14 Pro averaged 37 days successful precocious November — the longest clip since the caller exemplary was released. The probe outfit said it was seeing hold times summation "significantly" crossed each markets it monitors.

That five-week hold means idiosyncratic buying the caller telephone contiguous apt won't person it successful their hands until mid-January. By comparison, the hold for an iPhone 13 Pro averages conscionable 15 days, according to the tracker.

Apple has been struggling with delays arsenic COVID-19 cases surge successful China, on with the attendant lockdowns. Bloomberg this week reported that tumult astatine Zhengzhou, a cardinal manufacturing hub for the company, would pb to a shortfall of 6 cardinal iPhone Pros this season, confirming erstwhile estimates from Morgan Stanley and Wedbush that the iPhone shaper was falling abbreviated successful its production.

"Production is cramped significantly—this could beryllium 5%, perchance 10% of iPhone units successful its astir important period, successful presumption of Christmas," Wedbush expert Dan Ives told CBS News.

Ives noted that immoderate Apple stores are seeing iPhone 14 Pro shortages of up to 40% of emblematic inventory.

Apple did not respond to a petition for comment.

With COVID-19 connected the emergence in China, it's slowing enactment astatine FoxConn, the electronics shaper that assembles iPhones for Apple. Meanwhile, residents are protesting the residential and concern shutdowns nether the nation's "zero-COVID" policy, with protests spreading to large cities and adjacent starring to calls for President Xi Jinping to step down.

"With the 'head scratching' zero-COVID argumentation successful China present reaching a tipping constituent and protests crossed the country, Apple is fundamentally caught successful the cross-fire heading into the all-important Christmas clip period," Wedbush analysts said. 

The nationwide demonstrations travel aft weeks of idiosyncratic unrest astatine FoxConn. Last week, a quality implicit wage astatine the company's mill successful Zhengzou successful cardinal China sparked worker protests that led to a constabulary showdown successful which immoderate demonstrators were beaten. Workers person besides chafed against quarantine practices owed to strict COVID policies, Bloomberg noted.

The Taiwanese institution was forced to apologize connected Thursday, blaming the wage quality connected a "technical error" successful adding caller employees aft an October exodus of thousands of employees implicit what they said were unsafe moving conditions.

Apple could inactive summation accumulation successful the coming weeks to effort to marque up immoderate of the shortfall, Wedbush noted.

"Now it's the achy waiting crippled to spot what ramped accumulation looks similar implicit the adjacent week for Apple to easiness immoderate iPhone shortages that are gathering globally," Ives wrote.

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• Apple
• China