From: Yahoo! Tech —

Retail market observers say there’s an iPod shortage looming this holiday season — a shortage of ‘iPhone’ proportions, as market analyst Shah Wu of Kaufman Brothers investment bank put it.

As Yahoo! tech reports, “Wu checked his retail sources and found that Amazon.com, Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart have all been experiencing shortages of the popular iPod Touch, Nano, and Shuffle models. Wait times for certain models on Amazon range from three weeks to two months.”

“It’s a selective dearth, though. You can’t buy the bright green 1GB iPod Shuffle on Amazon without waiting a month or two, but if you can bear the pain of a bright blue one, it’ll arrive in a matter of days. Similarly, while the 8GB and 16GB iPod Touch models take a while to ship, the 32GB model is stocked and ready to go. The Apple Store doesn’t seem to be lacking any models at this time.”

Other observers noted that the iPod was a hot item with ‘Black Friday’ [the day after Thanksgiving Day] shoppers in the U.S. and suggested that the shortage should not come as a surprise.

But skeptics suggest that the notion of a shortage is really a ploy by Apple to generate hype and move more product in tight economic times, when families are cutting back on holiday spending and/or pooling their gift dollars to buy one large item the whole family can enjoy.