If you're planning to buy yourself or a loved one the iPhone 14 Pro for Christmas, you'd better move fast. The Chinese anti-lockdown and pro-labour protests have affected production in lots of factories, including the plant responsible for making the iPhone 14 Pro.
According to Bloomberg, that means there will be 6 million fewer Pros than Apple planned to make this year.
From a purely selfish first-world problems perspective, the protests are making an already bad situation worse: Pros have been delayed since November, and when I reported on those delays last month delivery times were already showing as early to mid December. Looking at the UK Apple Store now, that's moved to 30 December.
How to get an iPhone 14 Pro before Christmas
The least stressful thing to do is to wait until after Christmas, when there will be less demand for Apple's best phone; a quick look at eBay shows that the profiteers are already cashing in with inflated iPhone 14 Pro prices, although there seem to be a very small number of genuine sales that aren't trying to fleece you. There are also a few refurbished models available.
If you'd rather stick with well known retailers, the Stock Informer website (www.stockinformer.co.uk) shows who's got what; at the time of writing most retailers are sold out of all configurations, but BT has the 128GB model.
It's not all bad news, though. The iPhone 14 Pros aren't made in the same place as other iPhone 14 models, so there's still stock of the iPhone 14 Plus in various configurations as well as the standard iPhone 14. If you absolutely have to have an iPhone 14 and can't wait for the Pro, the standard 14 is still a great iPhone.
