Re:The Dual Optimization of Air Freight: How Many iPhones Fi...
by jheriko on Sunday May 03, 2015 @08:02PM
(#9483606)
this only works if there is a delay. part of organising this sort of thing is doing it upfront to avoid the delays, the deliveries can all still arrive at the same time. the trade off is that you can not react to supply/demand change so quickly... even then surely you would use planes to fill that gap only, not for everything...
one thing that probably skews me is time... air freight has probably gotten cheaper continuously over the last 15 years..
given the problems when there is a lack of supply of phones, i'm still dubious that air freight is the standard option... such shortages last longer than a week.
Assume they can earn 5% on their cash hoard with smart, conservative investments.
If they have a $600 phone (they sell them all for that price) at sea for 1 month they would have earned about $2.50.
They sell the phones as fast as they can make them, and if they don't have a phone in stock and someone desperately needs a phone, they may buy an android, so that's revenue they'll never see again.
When we're talking about $0.40 savings to have to delay $600+ in guaranteed revenue by a month. That's all I need to see to know do air every time.
Of course we also know that Apple manages their entire supply chain with just 5 days of inventory in stock at any give time. Much harder to do that with ocean freight.