> day and date of release

Doesn't have to be day and date of release for apple to learn that they don't want to upgrade.

Most enterprise customers have customer management teams at apple and like, so they can easily learn that company [x,y,z] may not buy full fleet upgrades (or even partial fleet) and downscale manufacturing.

I bet that chip fab costs are high right now. If apple knows they can slow production down until next spring, they may chose to do that to save money.

Most of them?

Without any lag at all for IT department test and certification? No, and generally if you want a flagship you get it on BYOD terms because at that level people have different preferences for form factor and features.

Anyway the long wait times for devices make it pretty obvious this is a supply issue, not a demand issue.

What value is "certification" from random IT of apple or samsung devices? Pure CYA.

Totally, it certainly wouldn't have anything to do with verifying all the apps required by the business still work correctly and updating helpdesk documentation for tech illiterate user support.

All the companies I have been at allowed their employees to get the latest iPhone as a work phone when they were released. The IT department had no say in that.

At senior level you can sometimes buy it BYOD and expense it, but the market dynamics of that are the same as personal purchases and people will get whatever specific model they prefer. That's very different from enterprise IT department and fleet phone ordering, which is where the real numbers are.

Real numbers…of iPhones? No, the real numbers are what people buy for themselves.

I don't have numbers but while maybe in the SV bubble iPhones are given to employees en masse, the more typical pattern is people just buy their own phones and the company may reimburse some amount of monthly mobile fees.

I worked for a company that had management performance bonuses linked to moving 90%+ of users from firm supplied handset and plans onto byod.

I work at an MSP that acts "IT department" for the SME segment. We also sell phones, laptops, desktops and peripherals. Our customers always get iPhones, the seniors always gets the latest and greatest iPhone.

This is in Sweden where we're taxed about 50% (I make 50% of what my employer pays for me), this might make us give away iPhones to employees like it's nothing.

Think of this: Employment tax, 30%, income tax 30%, value added tax for goods, 25%.

My employer doesn't have to pay either of these, but if I were to buy an iPhone I'd have to pay all of it. I imagine this affects how generous our employers are giving us "tax free perks".

I had to argue the case with my boss(CEO) to get a cheaper phone since I break them quite often and felt shameful bringing the bills in for repairs.

Now that I'm changing jobs my new employer asked "what gear do you want", I could get essentially whatever I wanted. Seems like a kitted System76 laptop and a Fairphone 4, is what I'll stick with.

TL;DR: Tax affects who gets what in what way.

Similar in Australia with salary sacrifice tax breaks for buying mobile phones and laptops 'primarily for work purposes'