The iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro series are seeing longer than expected delivery times due to supply chain disruptions caused by the ongoing COVID wave in Vietnam. This has limited the supply of some key camera components assembled in Vietnam and used by Apple in the iPhone 13 series.

The component shortage is further exacerbated by Apple using sensor-shift stabilization for the entire iPhone 13 lineup. Until the iPhone 12 series, Apple only used sensor-shift stabilization on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, while the other models relied on OIS.

“Assemblers can still produce the new iPhones, but there’s a supply gap [in] that the inventories of the camera modules are running low. There’s nothing we can do but to monitor the situation in Vietnam every day and wait for them to ramp up the output,” one of the excutives said.

The Nikkei Asia report states that the supply crunch might improve from mid-October as production in selected Vietnam facilities has picked up in recent days.

Despite not being billed as a major upgrade over the iPhone 12, the supply crunch means the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro series are seeing delayed delivery times. In the United States, most of the iPhone 13 Pro models are only available for delivery four weeks from now. In Japan and China, selected iPhone 13 models are listed for delivery after five weeks.

The camera components supply crunch comes at a time when the entire industry is already reeling with a major semiconductor shortage. In many ways, Apple has not been as severely affected by the semiconductor shortage as the rest of the industry, but the shipping times of many of its products are longer than usual.

Have you received your iPhone 13 or iPhone 13 Pro? Or has your order been delayed?