Apple is able to have a queue for iPhones because they control the iPhone supply - both in the sense that they are the OEM for the device and in the sense that

Apple is able to have a queue for iPhones because they control the iPhone supply - both in the sense that they are the OEM for the device and in the sense that they have very strong control over their own suppliers. Vendors are not going to treat everyone equally when Apple is a big fish that can wreck your business if you don't play ball. Retailers do not have this kind of power. If Best Buy pre-sells more iPhones than they have inventory for, there's nothing obligating Apple to actually sell those iPhones to those customers through Best Buy. Apple could decide tomorrow to cut Best Buy's allocation because AT&T needs them for a big customer promo. Compounding this is the fact that almost all retail businesses are cash-flow limited. Their job isn't to buy things and sell them at 1% markup, it's to predict the future three months ahead of time so that products arrive on shelves exactly when they will be purchased. In other words, they're futures traders that take physical delivery. So every dollar they get needs to be spent on more inventory, or they run out of things to sell. This means that, in the event of an iPhone shortage, Best Buy has two terrible options and one good one: * Treat those iPhone orders as ordinary revenue and use it to order more stock of other products. If Apple cuts your allocation, then you have to refund your customers money that you don't have, meaning that you have to take out a loan on future revenue to pay back existing orders. * Tie up your cashflow by holding that iPhone money in escrow until those orders are fulfilled. You don't take on the risk of not being able to refund orders, but now you are paying the opportunity cost of not being able to buy as much inventory three months down the line. * Don't sell unallocated iPhones. Your customers will buy something else instead. Now, could Apple extend their queue system beyond their own online store? Perhaps - but that requires a lot of coordination from other retailers who would rather just be able to move product quickly. The flip side of the cash flow problem I mentioned above is that, if a product doesn't move quickly, retailers want to get rid of it quickly to cut their losses and take a chance on something else. A good example of this would be the iPhone SE 3rd gen, which sold like garbage. Under the current arrangement of retailers getting allocation and buying inventory, Best Buy can at worst fire-sale iPhones nobody wanted. But with a queue system, they're either... * Just drop-shipping iPhones from Apple to customers, which means they can't have in-store inventory * Holding inventory they can't sell unless Apple lets them, which means they're letting iPhones live rent-free in their warehouse tying up cash flow. The "just let me queue up" model is something that works out great for customers, but makes the rest of the business a lot harder, because modern supply chains are not designed for shortages.