The gold iPhone 5S has sold out online and in most stores.
The gold iPhone 5S isn’t alone, but it is the most popular model having stretched expected shipping dates in October faster than the white and space grey versions online. There may still be some in stores around the world, but reports are coming in fast that the gold version is a rare find, the 64Gb model the rarest of all.
In New York, one Apple store had just one of the 64GB gold iPhone 5S models on hand. In Los Angeles, an Apple employee was already reducing expectations of finding a gold iPhone 5S by the time she’d reached the 20th person in line outside the store asking which model they were planning on purchasing. In another city, the first man in line had been there fifteen days hoping to snag a gold 64GB iPhone; he was sadly disappointed when they had none available when the doors opened.
All of this comes amidst rumors of supply constraints for the new iPhone 5S mainly due to the components required for the fingerprint scanner that unlocks the smartphone. Apple has also broken with their traditional updates of sales on the first day by remaining mum. They’ve been very forthcoming since the iPhone 3GS first went on sale, but now there’s nothing but crickets coming from Cupertino. It’s possible this is also due to selling two iPhone models on launch day, the 5S and 5C. No longer a single stream of revenue to report, it may be too complex to breakdown sales figures for the separate models quickly for updates.
All versions of the iPhone 5S are still available to order. It is just an extremely long wait for the shipping date now, all the way back into October. There have been no reports of supply problems with the iPhone 5C, but then it is basically a repackaged iPhone 5, so there are no new internal components in short supply.
With the gold iPhone 5S being sold out in most places, it’s likely those models will see an immediate premium on the resale market as enterprising consumers take advantage of what may be a very short window of opportunity to make a bundle.
Did you luck out and get an iPhone 5S gold model? Let me know in the comments below!
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