Apple wants you to buy the iPhone Duo — just not three of them. The company has quietly capped iPhone Duo pre-orders at two units per customer across its online stores in the US, UK, Japan, Spain, and other markets, Engadget reports. Try to add a third and the store flashes a blunt warning: "A maximum of 2 iPhone Duo can be purchased per customer. Please adjust the total quantity of iPhone Duo in your order before checking out."
Apple hasn't said a word about the limit publicly. It wasn't there when pre-orders opened on October 16 — Engadget reports that some Reddit users successfully ordered four devices in the opening minutes. So this looks reactive: demand Apple itself called "nothing short of extraordinary" collapsed launch-day availability in minutes, and dozens of Duos quickly surfaced on eBay, some priced above $5,000 against the $1,999 starting price.
The cap is a page from Apple's old playbook — it limited the iPhone 5 to two per customer back in 2012, and has run similar restrictions on high-demand iPhones in China. But here's the awkward part: a two-per-customer limit barely slows a determined scalper. Multiple Apple accounts and different credit cards are a trivial workaround, and Engadget points out it's unclear whether Apple is doing anything to stop that. The rule may filter out casual bulk-buyers, but the people running resale operations are not the ones stymied by a cart warning.
The timing matters because the real test is two days away. The iPhone Duo hits stores on Friday, October 23, and retail availability is expected to be thin — Apple reportedly may not even offer walk-in purchases on launch day in some markets. Right now Apple's own store quotes a January 22 shipping estimate, while Best Buy is still showing November 10 pickup for the 512GB model — a gap that tells you exactly where the arbitrage is.
Apple's demand problem is the good kind of problem, and the company's PR machine is making sure everyone knows it. But a purchase limit that arrived silently, a week late, reads less like a scalping solution and more like a message: we see the eBay listings, and we're watching. Whether that message lands with anyone except the press release crowd is another question.
— via Engadget