During Tuesday’s Apple fiscal third-quarter 2021 earnings call, Apple CFO Luca Maestri told the virtually assembled that Apple expects supply constraints of the iPhone and iPad during the fiscal fourth quarter, which ends September 2021.
“The supply constraints that we’ve seen in the June quarter will be higher in the September quarter,” said Maestri. Supplies will be especially tight for the iPhone and iPad.
Maestri did not specify whether the predicted supply constraints will affect the iPhone 13 models, which will launch later this year.
When asked whether the supply constraints will continue into the holiday quarter, but Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he doesn’t want to predict that. “We’re going to take it one quarter at a time,” he said. “We will do everything we can to mitigate whatever set of circumstances we’re dealt.”
Cook went on to say that the constraints that Apple is seeing are impacting other companies as well.
The majority of the constraints are of the variety that others are seeing. I would classify it as industry shortage. We do have some shortages in addition to that where the demand has been so great and so beyond our own expectation that it’s difficult to get the entire set of parts within the lead times that we try to get those. It’s a little bit of that as well. As I said before, the latest nodes, which we use in several of our products, have not been as much of an issue. The legacy nodes are where the supply constraints have been, on silicon.
Cook also added that while component costs in the aggregate have declined, Apple is currently paying out more for shipping than it would like.