The industry-wide component shortage that has hampered supplies of the summer's hottest smartphones appears to be continuing, with availability of three major smartphones still constrained.
Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) customers hoping to snag a Motorola (NYSE:MOT) Droid X, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) customers hunting for an HTC Evo, and AT&T Mobility (NYSE:T) subscribers who crave Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 4 may all have to exert patience while supply catches up to demand.
According to Verizon's website, the Droid X will ship by Sept. 9. Sprint's website advises customers that the Evo is sold out online, and that customers should check a local Sprint store for availability. And Apple's website confirms that there is a three-week shipping delay for both the 16 GB and 32 GB models of the iPhone 4. AT&T's website advises that the carrier has a limited iPhone 4 inventory, and that all orders are processed on a first-come, first-serve basis. The carrier estimates orders will ship within 5-10 business days.
Verizon's Droid X sold out shortly after it went on sale in July, and Sprint has been dealing with Evo shortages for weeks. The blame, analysts say, falls on component suppliers and chip makers that have had difficulty ramping up to meet new demand. "What happened about a year ago, all these suppliers basically just went dark in the recession," Rick Pierson, a senior semiconductor analyst at research firm iSuppli, told the Dallas Morning News.
Indeed, the issue also stretches to network equipment vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), which too are struggling to source components for their kit.
The shortages have not stopped consumers from snapping up smartphones of all varieties, however. Smartphone sales jumped 50.5 percent in the second quarter compared with last year, more than three times the growth of the overall handset market, according to research firm Gartner.
For more:
- see this Dallas Morning News article
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