Are iPhone 5 Delivery Delays Over?

The second wave of iPhone 5 pre-orders may not eventually see delays as long as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) had predicted. Several customers who were warned of a wait of two weeks or more and were seeing delivery dates later than October 5 are said to be set to receive their phones this week.

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Estimated shipping dates had begun rising for customers barely an hour into Apple opening the phone for pre-orders on September 14. Apple announced that a flood of orders had meant it was sold out of its initial batch, and moved delivery dates up from the earlier one week to between two and three weeks. The company announced it had sold 2 million units of the device in the first 24 hours. “We’ve been completely blown away by the customer response,” Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple, had said then.

While some have mentioned conspiracy theories of the possibility of an artificial shortage having been created in order to generate buzz, Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes is impressed by the quick delivery turnaround. “We are positively surprised regarding the pace of the rollout, since we had expected a bigger impact from component constraints,” Reitzes wrote.

The iPhone 5 comes with a display measuring 4 inches diagonally, has a faster A6 processor, and is capable of connecting to the faster LTE wireless networks. Apple is charging $199 for the cheapest iPhone 5 if customers sign up for a new two-year contract with AT&T (NYSE:T), Verizon (NYSE:VZ), or Sprint (NYSE:S) in the U.S.

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