This is the inaugural issue of the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max availability. For those of you who are new to the column, we take a snapshot of T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T iPhone availability through their on-line storefronts (iPhone, iPhone Plus, iPhone Pro, and iPhone Pro Max) late each Saturday afternoon throughout the fall. Then we list any changes from the previous week in the attachment. Please note that Verizon and T-Mobile use a “ships by” date while AT&T uses a “delivers by” date. We assign three business days as the gap between the two for carrier comparisons.
This week, we have both the September 21 and September 28 views. Overall, the conclusions are as follows:
- AT&T continues to have the broadest and most persistent backlog (roughly 2 weeks). It is the only carrier experiencing total unavailability.
- T-Mobile has widespread backlog on the White Titanium color, but availability is mixed on the other colors and memory sizes.
- Verizon is heavily promoting their “trade-in any phone in any condition” campaign and it seems to only be impacting the 126 GB iPhone 16 Pro model. They show the most availability of the iPhone 16 Pro of the three carriers.
- There is no clear evidence that T-Mobile is seeing a disproportionate benefit from this iPhone cycle. Looks to be on par with last year.
- iPhone 16 Pro Max availability did not improve week over week. We will be watching this for chronic issues (saw that in 2019 with the iPhone 11).
Overall, there are fewer backlogs with the iPhone 16 Pro than we have seen in previous years. The iPhone 16 Pro Max looks about the same as last year (we don’t think that 2020, 2021, and 2022 are comparable due to supply chain issues).
Please direct any questions on this analysis to [email protected]. PDF files below.
