Sprint Suffers Another Shipment Delay, This Time with the Samsung Galaxy S III
posted Saturday Jun 23, 2012 by Nicholas DiMeo
Sprint isn't having very good luck as of late. At the end of last month, their flagship HTC Evo 4G LTE phone was held up in customs because of Apple's ITC violation against HTC, which caused thousands of angry customers at a time where Sprint is taking a big risk. This week, more phone shipment problems arose for the mobile carrier.
Samsung apparently did not predict that the new Samsung Galaxy S III would be the most in-demand phone worldwide as it turned out to be. This has caused an inventory issue with Sprint and Samsung was unable to provide enough inventory to cover all of the pre-orders since June 5th and estimated sales on launch day, which was June 21st.
From Sprint's community blog,
Due to overwhelming demand for Galaxy S III worldwide, Samsung has informed us they will not be able to deliver enough inventory of Galaxy S III for Sprint to begin selling the device on June 21. We are working closely with Samsung on a delivery schedule to support our launch.
We have begun shipping pre-orders for the 16GB version of Samsung Galaxy S III and anticipate they will be delivered by June 21. We hope to begin shipping pre-orders for the 32GB version next week as we receive inventory.
We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate the patience of our customers as we work through this minor delay in availability. We know they are eager to experience the next generation of the Samsung Galaxy series on the only network to provide unlimited data plans. Should this situation change, we will continue to update this post as we have new information to share.
It should be noted that Apple again tried to ban sales of the new smartphone, but a judge in the US District Court ruled that Apple could not start an argument for this case as there were already enough issues to take care of at the hearing. The judge reported that both Apple and Samsung filed a form that said they would partake in "additional discovery and briefing regarding the Samsung Galaxy S III at some later, unspecified time."
For now, hopefully the turnaround will be just as quick as the HTC one and phones can start to hit the market. I'd also like to make a footnote that T-Mobile was also affected by the shortage, but honestly, who's buying high-end phones on T-Mobile and expecting anything less than a catastrophic problem one way or another?
