The iPhone 'Secret'

Less than two weeks later, in mid-March, the first shipments of the new devices began arriving. More shipments followed on March 27, April 28 and May 6. Many containers arrived at the Port of Oakland, Calif., the third-largest port on the West Coast according to ImportGenius.com. Those containers were quickly trundled off the ships and trucked 27 miles south to a distribution center in Fremont, Calif.

On April 23, when Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told investors on Apple's quarterly earnings call the company would sell 10 million iPhones before the year was out, he knew that millions of the new phones were already on their way to retailers.

By May 6, it became clear that AT&T was getting ready for something big, with a blogger publishing an all-hands memo to employees at AT&T stores telling them they couldn't take vacation time between June 15 and July 12. That news hit amid widespread reports of iPhone shortages in Europe and across the U.S.

Meanwhile, the container ships just kept coming. May 17, the last known shipment arrived at the Port of New York aboard the NYK Delphinus, an enormous, squared-off slab of a vessel flagged to Panama, according to Peterson.

But it wasn't until earlier this month, when a potential customer, impressed with what Peterson could dig up about ethanol imports, asked Peterson about the iPhone. "This is really detailed stuff," the potential customer asked Peterson. "What can you tell me about the iPhone?"
That, of course, could be just the start of what Jobs announces June 9. Veteran Apple watchers are noting a redesign of Apple's hot-selling notebook computers is long overdue. Some are even wondering if Apple will introduce a touch-sensitive table tablet that riffs off the iPod Touch's touch-sensitive interface. Quite a mystery.

What we know for sure though is that sales of the iPhone are fading fast and Apple will have to do something very soon to get those phones moving. And it's clear now that Apple has many million units of that "special something" already sitting in distribution centers around the country. We can hardly wait to find out what Jobs has in store.

© 2008