From a former industry insider: Apple's annual phony new iPhone shortage

Sport Sullivan: "You know what you feed a dray horse in the morning if you want a day's work out of him?"
Jimmy: "What?"
Sport Sullivan: "Just enough so he knows he's hungry."
From the movie Eight Men Out.

Now that I am two years removed from the telecom industry, I feel I can comment on one of the biggest con jobs in retail sales. Whenever a new iPhone is released, there is always a shortage of the new handsets.

This Charlie Brown-and-the football act is playing today across the world with the release of the iPhone 5S.

Here is how the Apple scam works. Rather than ship enough iPhones to meet demand, the gadget and computer behemoth distributes a only a few for the first day that iPhones go on sale. Both Apple and the service providers make it clear that there will only be a dribble of the handsets available. So people, almost exclusively male by the way, line up in front of stores before they open--some even sleep outside overnight in front of Apple or cell phone retail outlets.

These queues attract media attention--which gives Apple uncountable amounts of publicity.

It's that time again!

When I worked at a big telecom store, we sold all of our first-day iPhones in about an hour. Apple usually shipped only about 40 of them to us, Not everyone in line was able to buy the new iPhone--but then we offered the ship-one-to-your-home option. Most people, in order to rationalize their decision to wait in line for hours, swallowed their pride and selected this choice, rather than storm out of the store.

But the very next day--and this occurred during all four of the four iPhone launches that I worked--our store surprisingly received about twenty more, which of course were quickly snapped up by frantic customers. The next day--always a Sunday--we received none--but then over the next couple of weeks, we'd receive two or three a day.

Then we'd have plenty. And so it will be this time. And next time.

Oh, I own an Android smartphone.

Somewhere there probably is an Apple warehouse with stacks of unsold iPhone 5S handsets.

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