Though Apple has already started to ship its new Power Macintosh G4 computers to a few lucky customers, availability of the G4 chip is rather scarce at the moment. Steve Jobs said yesterday that not all of the 150,000 pre-orders for the G4 machines would be filled by the end of this quarter, which ends at the end of September.
Motorola is unable to produce as many G4 chips as Apple needs, after having problems ramping up G4 production and without IBM being a second supplier of microprocessors to Apple. Take a look at the Wired News article, “Chip Drought Slows Apple Profits” for details.
This two week shortage shouldn’t ultimately affect Apple’s bottom line, but overreaction in the stock price might make for some bad publicity. It’s just bad timing that this quarter ends in less than two weeks, and Apple won’t be able to report the sales which are now backordered until the next quarter. The News.com article “Apple stumbles, warns of lower earnings” gives a particularly downcast spin on the issue.
