The shortage of the wildly in demand, flat panel iMac is due, in part, to a shortage of 15-inch LCD displays, according to a CNET article.
While it’s too early to determine how the delay will affect the company’s bottom line, Apple is “failing to capitalize on the huge amount of publicity it received during the product’s unveiling in mid-January, including a cover story in Time magazine, CNET said. The story says distributors Ingram Micro and Tech Data have backlogs for the high-end iMac extending 18.6 weeks and 10.7 weeks, respectively.
Combined, the two distributors had received only 1,326 high-end iMacs by March 4. When the new iMac debuted, analysts predicted that Apple would ship 200,000 or more by March 31, the end of the company’s second fiscal quarter.
Ingram has 6,500 orders for the midrange and low-end iMacs, which are just coming into the market now. Tech Data has 1,000, but neither has any in stock or a firm ship date from Apple.
“This is a big faux pas on Apple’s part, not having this all ironed out before they brought the new iMac to market, particularly if they want to wow Windows users and bring them over to what they call ‘the light side’ from the Windows dark side,” Toni Duboise, an analyst at ARS, which conducted spot checks in stores, told CNET.
On the one hand, Apple is in the enviable position of having a product so popular it can’t meet demand. On the other hand, it’s uncertain what the delays will mean on the company’s bottom line.