iPhone 3G supplies are dwindling. Does this mean a new model is on the way?
(Credit: 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.
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