No Preorder? Apple Says Don’t Even Bother Showing Up for the iPhone Duo
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Apple is reportedly instructing its retail employees to advise customers to avoid visiting the stores to attempt to buy the iPhone Duo when it’s released this Friday, October 23.
According to MacRumors, Apple Store employees have been told not to expect any iPhone Duo stock for walk-in purchases on launch day. Retail staff have been instructed to discourage customers who do not have a preorder from visiting an Apple Store with expectations of buying the device, warning that such a move will result in heartbreak, or at the very least, severe disappointment.
Meanwhile, Apple’s online store still instructs potential iPhone Duo buyers without a preorder in place to check with stores on Saturday, October 24, for pickup availability. While pickup reservations were briefly available on the website, that option soon vanished — likely after the limited stock was depleted at each store.
There is definitely no guarantee that any stock of the iPhone Duo will be ready and waiting in store on Friday. Apple’s instructions telling employees to discourage in-store purchase attempts of the device would be a way to avoid having to deal with disappointed, and perhaps angry, customers who thought they had a way around lengthy online wait times for delivery.
As we reported on Friday, Apple’s website still shows a late January delivery date for preorders. While 9to5Mac reported this morning that some customers are seeing those dates moved up, that only applies to existing preorders; new orders remain hovering around January 25, 2027.
Early rumblings about constrained availability of the iPhone Duo began a few months back, well before the official announcement of the device. Multiple supply chain reports over the past year have indicated that Apple has been struggling to meet production yield goals.
In early September, Nikkei Asia reported that Duo production had only reached a few hundred units per day by late August. As noted by Mactrast, a report from China’s Jiemian News indicated that Apple was still having issues producing as many units as it had initially targeted.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said that while Apple had once believed that production issues could push the start of sales well into November, the company eventually decided it had enough inventory to move ahead with the October 23 launch date. However, Gurman now believes that was a “major mistake” on Apple’s part.
“Let me cut to the chase: Apple made a major mistake here,” he said. “The company knew there would be severe supply constraints but went ahead with the launch anyway, apparently prioritizing a desire to get the device on the market early in its fiscal first quarter over satisfying demand. That will disappoint many of the early adopters most eager to buy it.”
Gurman’s comments came in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter.
Gurman went on to say that while Apple had originally planned to limit the iPhone Duo’s initial launch to only the United States and China before slowly expanding availability to other countries, the Cupertino firm somehow decided that there was sufficient inventory to offer preorders in 70 countries simultaneously.
The iPhone Duo price starts at $1,999 in the United States, with the first preorder deliveries scheduled for October 23. While Apple is apparently doing its best to discourage walk-in buyers on iPhone Duo release day, there may still be a slim chance for some severely limited availability in stores. It’s much more likely stock will begin showing up in the days and weeks that follow, as Apple Stores receive regular shipments, but you’ll still have to act fast if you want to snag one in store.
Apple also typically underpromises and overdelivers on delivery dates, but I wouldn’t count on that being the case this time around. So, don’t hold your breath until you get one, because blue is not a good color.
