Stores run out of iPhone 11 stock as coronavirus stranglehold continues

iPhone 11 Pro (Image credit: Rene Ritchie/iMore)

What you need to know

NYC stores are running out of iPhones.
iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro are in short supply.
Coronavirus and its impact on production are to blame.

If you're a New Yorker who planned on picking up a new iPhone 11 or iPhone 11 Pro this past weekend, you probably came up short. Stocks of Apple's hottest iPhones are reportedly very low across New York City, according to a New York Post report.

That report says that carriers like AT&T and Verizon across NYC have either run out of the new iPhones or have very limited supply. Employees told the news outlet that they simply aren't seeing iPhones arrive in deliveries. But Samsung phones are arriving as normal.

The popular iPhone 11 Pro has been out of stock for "at least a couple of weeks," a worker at an Upper East Side AT&T store explained, adding that there's no telling when the store's next shipment will be."We got a shipment and it didn't have any iPhones in it – just flip phones and Samsungs," said a Verizon store employee on the Upper West Side.

While an employee told the New York Post that stocks were being held in warehouses to create artificial demand, it's more likely that iPhones simply aren't around at all. With Foxconn having had to close factories in China due to the coronavirus outbreak it's been suspected that stocks might run dry. In New York, that seems to have already started to happen.

Foxconn is yet to get back up to full manufacturing capacity, but things are moving in the right direction. Hopefully, that trend will continue and the current stock shortage proves to be a short-lived thing.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.

3 Comments

this is all hearsay! You spread rumors like the 80 year old lady up the street. Learn journalism at some point
I don't think that word means what you think it means. Renee referenced a sourced work and linked to it as well. Perhaps you should take some time and learn what words mean before you try to use them.
A lot of Samsung devices are made in countries other than China. I think think my Galaxy Note9 says "Made in Vietnam" on it. This has probably mitigated the effects this outbreak has had on them. In addition to that, Samsung is probably fortunate that they use two different SoCs for their devices. Exynos for the Global and Snapdragon for the US (and maybe a couple of other regions). But the sales are probably not that high, anyways, as people simply aren't willing to go to stores in those places, and are not spending $1,000+ on a phone when they may need it for other emergency situations in the midst of this pandemic. When I bought my iPhone 11 Pro last month, I basically had to get it from the Apple Store, because no carrier stores near me had the 256GB variants. It was 64GB (if they had any) or go to the Apple Store. So, I just went and bought it with cash at teh Apple Store. Better that way, anyways. Stocks have been pretty meager for months. I don't think the Coronavirus is really as HUGE of a reason for this as insinuated. It has likely been low for several months.