It’s time to decide whether you want to be one of the first iPhone X owners in New Zealand. Apple and participating authorised resellers will start to accept orders this Saturday morning. You better be quick though as Apple reportedly faces production bottlenecks.

The latest information shows that the production volume most likely won’t be able to meet the anticipated demand. Apple will only produce 20 million iPhone X units before year-end. The reason is that there are production issues with some camera components related to the Truedepth technology employed by Face ID.

Lack of available units for pre-ordering

A relatively small number of iPhone X units will be available for pre-order. Estimates indicate that “only” between two to three million units will be available. That’s the worldwide number. This means that you have to be really fast to place your pre-order before the initial lot of units are sold out. Please mark your calendars at 8:01 AM on Saturday morning NZ time. At least there’s no physical Apple store in New Zealand, so we don’t have to worry about in-store supply. It will be fun to watch the lines in Australia though when the phone goes on sale on the 3rd of November.

Adjust production split

Apple has apparently also adjusted the production split between iPhone 8 and 8 Plus on the one hand versus the iPhone X on the other hand. The initial plans were to split the production between the two iPhone series 50/50. The demand for iPhone 8 has been weaker than expected while that of iPhone X has soared beyond expectations. Apple has therefore adjusted the split to about 35/65 in iPhone X’s favo