Solana Mobile Can’t Fulfill All Orders of Its Crypto-Integrated Android Citing ‘Inventory Management Issue’ – Unchained

On Thursday, 18 units of the Solana Saga mobile phone sold on the secondary online marketplace eBay for an average of $4,041, a more than sixfold increase from its original retail price.

Solana Mobile is not able to fulfill all outstanding orders of its crypto-integrated Android smartphone, the company announced Thursday.

“In working to fulfill orders, we learned of an inventory management issue with our third-party distributor that resulted in an inaccurate representation of our inventory,” stated Solana Mobile, a team within Solana Labs, on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).  “Given this, we are unfortunately unable to fulfill orders that were placed after inventory ran out. In addition, we canceled orders that were flagged for suspicious activity due to excessive device orders or payment risk, as we work to get Saga in the hands of as many users as possible.”

Last week, we saw an overwhelming demand for Saga, with sellouts in both the US & EU on our limited inventory of 20,000 devices produced globally.

In working to fulfill orders, we learned of an inventory management issue with our third-party distributor that resulted in an…

— Solana Mobile 🌱 (@solanamobile) December 22, 2023

Impacted customers have been notified of their order cancellation and will be refunded shortly, Solana Mobile said.

The announcement comes one week after the Solana Saga mobile phone sold out in the United States and European Union, amid surging demand that seemed to suprise Solana Mobile, which produced an inventory of 20,000 devices.

Shipping hardware products is “a whole different beast, wrote Martin Lee, content and communications lead at blockchain analytics firm Nansen, to Unchained via Telegram. Lee noted that Solana Labs, the developer of the Solana blockchain, is a software company learning “that the logistics of hardware isn’t as simple as shipping software.”

“Inventory management is insanely difficult, even for the best companies, let alone a software company that has never tried shipping physical products.”

The mobile device is built on hardware from OSOM, a firm based in the Bay Area that specializes in creating smartphones.

In an email to Unchained, Solana Labs Communications Manager Megan Enright, reiterated points in Solana Mobile’s earlier Twitter post. Enright called the surge in interest “exciting.” “Our priority continues to be listening to our community so that we can understand what demand looks like, both now and in the future to assess what comes next,” she wrote.OSOM did not immediately respond to Unchained’s request for comment.

Before selling out, the Solana Saga mobile phone retailed for $599, although, prices for the hardware device have been significantly higher on eBay. On Thursday, 18 units of the Solana Saga mobile phone sold on the secondary online marketplace for an average of $4,041, according to Unchained’s calculations.

CORRECTION (December 22, 2023, 12:48 p.m. EST): Corrects headline and first sentence to remove reference to a specific number orders.

UPDATE (December 22, 2023, 11:27 a.m. EST): Adds Solana Labs comment.