Why there might be iPhone shortages ahead

The LA Times recently picked up on an interesting trend. With the dollar plumbing record depths, game manufacturer Nintendo has been shipping more units of its popular, scarce Wii Fit to Europe: [Nintendo] also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro, ...

The LA Times recently picked up on an interesting trend. With the dollar plumbing record depths, game manufacturer Nintendo has been shipping more units of its popular, scarce Wii Fit to Europe:

The LA Times recently picked up on an interesting trend. With the dollar plumbing record depths, game manufacturer Nintendo has been shipping more units of its popular, scarce Wii Fit to Europe:

[Nintendo] also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro, said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. Pachter estimated that Nintendo shipped just 500,000 copies of the game in North America but as many as 2 million units to Europe. "The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We’re seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere," Pachter said.

With the iPhone going global today, this Nintendo story leads me to wonder if we aren’t eventually going to be seeing a similar calculus from Apple. Why keep your inventories high in the United States if you can bank more cash elsewhere? (The potential difference, of course, being that Nintendo is a Japanese company and Apple is American.)

(Hat tip: Slashdot)

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