Gauging consumer demand for a product can be hard, even for a company as successful as Apple. Sometimes a product is a breakout hit, there are production slowdowns at the factory, or both, and the company just can’t make ‘em fast enough. But there are other times when it’s just a failure of imagination, a miscalculation in the appeal of one’s own product that leads a company to just not make enough products to fulfill the surprising demand.
It doesn’t happen often to Apple, but every time it does, it’s an interesting data point. A few years back, Apple underestimated the appeal of the small, low-cost iPhone SE—and didn’t make enough to fulfill demand. And during the 2019 holidays, Apple didn’t make enough of the two-year-old Apple Watch Series 3, of all things.
