Apple’s recently-released 13″ MacBook Pro notebook looks to be off to a good start, albeit the company may be having difficulty keeping some of the model stocked as it enters the back-to-school shopping season.
According to AppleInsider, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster pointed out that the Apple online store is currently reflecting lead times of 7 to 10 business days for the faster of the two 13″ MacBook Pros. He notes this is the most extensive delay affecting the company’s 13″ notebook models ever.
Munster, which regularly tracks and records lead times for products on the Mac maker’s online store, said he had to look back more than two years into his records to find similar delays, and even then they spanned just 5 to 7 business days.
With the entry-level 15″ MacBook Pro using the same 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo chip also reflecting such delays, Munster put in a call to 10 Apple retail stores and found that 7 of them were short at least one of the 13″ models, but not always the speedier model.
“We see this as a sign that demand is outpacing the company’s build expectations, and it may take several weeks to reach a supply demand equilibrium,” he told clients.
Shortages of Apple’s mainstream notebook offerings comes just weeks after the company kicked off its back-to-school promotion offering students a free iPod touch with each Mac purchase and then rebranded its 13″ unibody MacBooks as more premium offerings under the MacBook Pro moniker.
For Macs, the Piper Jaffray analyst said he’s increasingly confident Apple will report sales of 2.2 million systems for the June quarter when it announces results a bit later this month. That compares to the nearly 2.5 million Macs the company sold during the same quarter one year ago.