iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Sell Out

Perhaps to no one's surprise, the just-announced iPhone 4S has been been leaping off the shelves ... in advance of it ever hitting shelves at all. In fact, as reported by numerous sources (here's the WSJ's version), the company's pre-launch inventory has all been sold — and they only started taking the orders on Friday.

Buzz

[bjourne]

Of course it is not news - it's buzz. The marketeers are pre-emptively engineering a situation in which the device can be said to have been "sold out" for example by channel stuffing [wikipedia.org]. The flock mentality ensures that if everyone thinks everyone else wants something, then they will want that thing too. It's a very simple marketing trick.