They ARE using multiple NAND flash vendors (at least Toshiba and Samsung confirmed), and apparently did so from the very beginning.

In fact, they even placed the flash memory chip on a separate storage board that only contains the flash memory chip, probably to make it easy to use different flash memory chips:

Well, they said before they ship more in August and September. So we are in a phase of increasing shipments. If your calculations right (and it looks fine for me), this means they decided that back in May. At that point it probably was clear enough that this shortage was not only through initial demand but by momentum. They probably already decided on another increase in production for the holidays. But will this all be enough? I expect a better situation not before next year.

Yeah, they seem not determined enough to reroute units meant for europe and the US.Maybe they differ technically a bit, because of different regulations. But I assume the technical changes are small, after we are behind PAL vs. NTSC and all have HDMI.

As far as I know the units shipped to here get sold through. So shipments are meeting demand, but it's not like we have an overabundance in stock. Missing supply in Japan is not in the hundreds or even thousands we in europe may be able to cough up, but in the tens of thousands each week. I'm not sure how the situation is in the US.

Utterly pathetic? The sold numbers (what they actually shipped) are far from utterly pathetic.

In that case they might be stoking artificial shortages to some degree. 

NAND flash is not some magically rare component,  it's in literally billions of devices, Nintendo's orders of 20 million year even are nothing in the grand scheme of production for such parts. 

There were almost 1.5 billion (B as in billion) smartphones shipped last year, virtually all of them have NAND flash. 

Exactly. A few million flash memory chips are nothing, that's just a welcome (but ultimately: lousy) excuse for not shipping more units.

This is what the "shortage" situation probably is really about:

Nintendo isn't shipping as many units as they could, if they really wanted, they could very well produce/ship more units. But that might have increased production/shipment costs a little, and Nintendo wasn't willing to do that, believing that such a step would hurt them in more than one way:

- higher production costs = smaller profit

- a little scarcity isn't so bad either, being easily available everywhere after just a short time might suggest to customers that the product isn't so hot after all, and that there's no hurry to instantly buy the product

So Nintendo talks about certain components being scarce, but doesn't mention that this is just a half-truth. And come holiday season, these shortages will suddenly mostly be resolved, what a lucky coincidence...

Well, playing devil advocate, what company wants to sell their product at a loss?Especially when said product is doing extremely well?Nintendo could ship more units through planes, like they did back in march, but that would skyrocket the price of each unit, and they would have to either pass on the cost to the final rpice or lose money.And none of them is really a situation a company wants to be in.A steady growth in shipments with a feasible and financially sound decision(in the sense that it keeps the profit margins or at the very least doesnt make them bleed money) is the best and probably the only decision any company would take.

And yet I've never actually seen one in store since it launched. Yes they seem to be pretty readily available online, but there still doesn't seem to be enough stock to keep them in stores. That certainly has an effect on impulse buyers and family shoppers. Especially since holyday season is coming up.

I saw a family eye the display units at a saturn the other day (with no boxed units in sight) and wondering what even the price was. Their kid REALLY wanted one though, so I told them the price and that you can usually find them on amazon. They were happy with that, but who knows if they're still going to buy it, they probably would have if they had been in stock.

Its not so easy, we had infos that are shortages of NAND memory on market, its not same thing that Nintendo made up, we have those infos way before this article, and that big companies like Apple of course are being prioritizing.

http://searchsolidstatestorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Why-the-NAND-flash-shortage-exists-and-what-to-do-about-it

https://www.kitguru.net/components/matthew-wilson/dram-and-nand-supply-shortage-expected-to-last-until-2018/

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/taking-apart-the-global-nand-memory-shortage/

http://www.semiconductorstore.com/blog/2017/Huge-Demand-of-NAND-and-SSD-Creates-Worldwide-Shortage/2388

https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/21/iphone-8-ram-flash-storage-chips/

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/07/06/iphone-8-3d-nand-flash-chip-shortages/