According to research firm BTIG, iPhone 5 production is finally catching up with consumer demand in the United States.
Wireless providers offering Apple's latest smartphone now showcase a ship-by date that is around one week away. The Apple shipping schedule, meanwhile, remains at 3 to 4 weeks, BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk noted.
However, Piecyk stated that the move could be a strategic one from Apple in order to get more consumers to visit their successful brick-and-mortar stores.
"Apple might be trying to induce their customers to reserve a phone for next day pick up at one of their retail stores in the hopes of capturing additional sales," he said. "The reservation policy is the same for the iPad mini, but we have been able to find iPad mini inventory increasingly available in the handful of stores that we called."
Piecyk added that it's too soon to exactly know whether the shortened shipping time means consumers are becoming less interested in buying the device or if Apple simply increased its production.
Either way, the iPhone 5's production delays is said to have negatively affected Apple's financial results. Its manufacturing supplier, Foxconn, admitted that the smartphone is the the most difficult device it's ever produced, as well as saying they can't keep up with production demand.