iPhone 5s Lead-times Stabilize As 51 More Countries Are About To Launch

I have been monitoring iPhone lead-times for the 5c since September 13 and the 5s iphone cases otterbox commuter lumia 920 since September 20. When I checked on Wednesday, October 9, the lead-times for the 5s on Apple's nine countries websites that has it available were showing October except the Gold version in Hong Kong and Singapore which were at "Currently Unavailable". (Note that my family and I own Apple shares).

When I checked Apple's and various wireless carriers websites on Friday, October 11, I found that Apple's lead-times had decreased to 2 to 3 weeks for almost all the 5s models. While this isn't a shrinking of the lead-times since it is essentially still October it does show that the addition of 51 countries over the next three weeks at least shouldn't make lead-times worse.

It makes sense that the lead-times would morph to something like 2-3 weeks since some shipment times will start to be in early November and Apple wouldn't want to make the lead-times say November in mid-October.

At three weeks after the iPhone 5s became available the iPhone 5s lead-times of 2-3 weeks are shorter than the 3-4 weeks that the iPhone 5 had at the same time after it was launched. However, the Gold version is still in very tight supply.

The lead-times for the four wireless carriers I have been tracking (Verizon, AT&T, Spring and Vodafone UK) have essentially stayed the same over the past ten days.

If you have doubts about Apple's ability to ramp production this is another indication that management knows what it is doing. The company had 9 million iPhones available on the first weekend vs. 5 million for the iPhone 5, is launching the 5s in more countries (62 vs. 31) and carriers than the 5 and seems to be getting to shorter lead-times faster for the 5s vs. the 5.

I have updated the Google Doc I created that is keeping track of the 5c and 5s lead-times on Apple, U.S. carrier websites and Vodafone UK. There is also information for the iPhone 5 and 4S via this link.

To see a detailed analysis of how many and which countries have received and are planning to receive the iPhone 5c and 5s vs. the iPhone 5 I wrote a post on Wednesday with the information.

Follow me on Twitter @sandhillinsight. Find my other Forbes posts here.

Source: Forbes