There is an apparent shortage of iPods in the wake of surprisingly strong demand for Apple’s portable music players on Black Friday.
At Amazon.com, the wait time for 8GB second-generation iPod touchs has stretched to three to five weeks, up from 11 days. The same for the 16GB version, according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu.
During the Black Friday weekend, Amazon was offering iPods at an 11 percent discount.
The shortages were also found at Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and others.
“Frankly, we find these sell-outs on iPods surprising given how difficult the macroeconomic environment is, putting a crimp on consumer spending,” Wu wrote in a Wednesday note to investors.
Wu believes Apple will sell 21 million iPods in December, a 90 percent jump from Cupertino’s September quarter.
Earlier this week, analysts described Apple iPods as Black Friday favorites. Deutsche Bank said “iPod demand remains healthy” with retailers reporting the 16GB touch and nano popular with consumers.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
