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Report: Best Buy's iPhone supply running low

A memo from Best Buy management to the company's employees notes that inventory levels of the iPhone 3G are dropping.

Erica Ogg Former Staff writer, CNET News
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur.
Erica Ogg

iPhone 3G
iPhone 3G supplies are dwindling. Does this mean a new model is on the way? James Martin/CNET

First-generation iPhone 3Gs are becoming a lot more scarce at retail.

Best Buy is anticipating its iPhone inventory running very low over the next few weeks, according to AppleInsider. A memo from Best Buy corporate to its sales employees says the stream of iPhone 3G inventory to its stores will slow to a trickle. Some stores may run completely out of the devices.

Reports surfaced last week of an Australian distributor that supplies iPhone 3Gs to carriers saying there was "only a few weeks stock available."

This is a similar pattern to what unfolded last year, when first-generation iPhone supplies began to run low at retail locations ahead of the launch of the iPhone 3G last July. Apple cut production perhaps a bit too early during the last go-round, resulting in very few iPhones sold during the second quarter of 2008.

This year, the reports of dwindling iPhone supplies are coming more than a month later than last year, suggesting that perhaps Apple has fine-tuned its iPhone model end-of-life process.

It also, of course, suggests what almost everyone is expecting at WWDC next week: the announcement of new iPhone hardware to go with the new iPhone OS 3.0 software.