Wii shortage costs Nintendo dear, analyst claims
Demand - supply = profit lost
The global Christmas Wii shortage may have saved individual gamers a few quid, but one analyst thinks it’s cost Nintendo up to $1.3bn (£637m/€888m).
MDB Capital Group’s senior analyst, James Lin, told the New York Times that the volume of unsatisfied demand is "staggering" and that “Nintendo is leaving $1.3bn on the table” by not fulfilling.
Lin also claimed the company could “easily sell double what they’re selling”.
However, Nintendo of America’s President, Reggie Fils-Aime, recently claimed the company isn’t constricting the availability of consoles to keep demand high.
"Anyone who suggests that a shortage is good for business really doesn’t understand business," he said.
The global Wii shortage has been well documented. Some shoppers have been forced to set sail for France, where there are reportedly Wiis available for £150 (€210/$300), which is about £30 less than their UK RRP.
COMMENTS
@ Dazed and Confused
"On the continent there is no shortage of Wiis."
Not actually 100% true - they are pretty much sold out in Holland, and have been for a few weeks.
They already increased production.
Nintendo announced in spring that they would increase the oproduction of Wii by 2 or 3 milions units for the christmas 2007 time compared to their original forecast.
However they explained that it wouldn't be enough to satisfy demand but that it was technicaly difficult for them to increase production more.
I suppose that a complex product as the Wii as a complex supply chain and that some of the components (processor, ram, GPU, chipset, drive or whatever) are bottlenecking production, or nintendo can't secure production units etc...
Shortage - what shortage
On the continent there is no shortage of Wiis. As the previous AC says "Nintendo are playing a blinder here" by manufacturing a situation they are getting loads of free publicity. They are probably selling more Wii's that they would without the so called shortage. However they need to have analyst reports like this or the EU would sue their asses off for restricting free trade. They have clearly lent on many major contintental suppliers to get them not to ship supply goods to the UK. The EU have been asked to investigate this. So they need to make it clear that they are suffering from this "shortage". Hence the report.
Glut on ebay
well, at 13.44 today on ebay there are 10,953 wii's and that one went for £175, not really a bad price considering a few weeks ago on ebay they were going for nearly £300, the laws of supply and demand are kicking in on ebay at least and I suspect a lot of store staff who thought they would grab a tidy profit on ebay from all the hype are about to get their fingers burnt :)
Heart icon cos you just gotta lurve it
Not really sold out...
I don't think the Wii would have been completely sold out if they weren't snapped up in big quantities by ebay sellers. Don't think there is anything Nintendo can do about that
