Supply chain issues really hurt in a market as competitive as smartphones. I wonder how many sales Apple loses per day because they can't keep the product in stock?
Buying an iPhone 5 involves either lots of waiting, or hard work to track one down.
It's a large market, I'm not really sure how you can be surprised by significant market segments that don't actually care all that much wich web-enabled phone they get when their contract is up. Not everyone make purchase decisions like a geek.
I'm sorry, I just see "SIII sales rise as iPhone 5 release" -> "Well it's just because they can't buy an iPhone 5" to be asinine. They couldn't buy the iPhone 5 before the announcement either. Playing it off as "they don't care" doesn't make any sense because there's correlation with the iPhone announcement date.
Even if they were potential iPhone 5 buyers, they either said: "Meh, not that great" or "Not great enough to bother waiting... 2 weeks". I guess I see a 2 week wait for a 104 week contract to not be a big deal...
Sadly, many people don't think that much about phone purchases. Waiting an extra two weeks for a phone might seem like the rational thing to do (if you wanted the iPhone 5 in the first place), but buying things isn't always a rational process.
If they get to the point of going into a store, you can bet that the store employees will do everything they can to sell them a different phone that is in stock today, that they can earn a commission on now.
The same would be true if iPhones were abundant and the Galaxy was out of stock, though Apple will always be at a disadvantage because there is only one "current" iPhone while there are any number of "new" Android phones the sales guy/gal could choose to push.
I have had great difficulty getting an iPhone 5. This has been compounded by the fact that AT&T have screwed up my iPhone order twice.
I am thinking of getting a galaxy because of the nonsense. The main reasoning for not doing so is the loss of my apps. 4 years of app purchases are effectively going to be wasted.
Most people buy a new phone when they're getting a new plan or renewing their old one, and don't want to delay that process for weeks.
As for "Let alone if it's the iPhone that they want" Apple is the most recognizable brand and thus a higher portion of it's users are likely to be uninformed and persuadable.
Buying an iPhone 5 involves either lots of waiting, or hard work to track one down.