Apple has announced that the iPhone 5 topped 2 Million pre-orders in its first 24 hours, breaking the record previously held by the iPhone 4S which was 1 million. Almost everything about the event on Wednesday was leaked ahead of time but that doesn’t seem to have slowed down the buying publics desire to own the latest offering from Apple. Given that shipping dates slipped within 1 hour of pre-orders being available there was speculation that Apple was having issues with supply but that doesn’t seem to be an issue.
If past launches are any indication, we would expect the next declaration from Apple to be of sales of the iPhone after its first 3 days on sale, which starts this Friday. For comparison, the iPhone 4S sold 4m units in its first 3 days and analysts expect the iPhone 5 to beat that number, the average is around 6m but some are predicting as much as 10m. Given then pre-orders have already doubled from the previous incarnation it certainly seems that this will be another record breaking weekend for Apple.
For those who want that number broken down a little further, that works out at 1389 a minute and 23 a second
Links – Apple
Update: Carphone Warehouse have also confirmed this is the most pre-ordered handset ever in the history of the business. Their press release is below
iPHONE 5 IS MOST PRE-ORDERED HANDSET EVER AT CARPHONE WAREHOUSE
Record number of orders placed via mobile devices
London, 18 September 2012 – Carphone Warehouse has announced that, since opening pre-orders to customers on Friday, the iPhone 5 has been the most pre-ordered handset in the history of the business.
The UK’s largest independent mobile retailer has taken more than four times as many pre-orders for the new Apple handset than any other handset launch since it began trading in 1989.
Graham Stapleton, Chief Commercial Officer at Carphone Warehouse, says, “Last week’s pre orders for the iPhone 5 smashed all previous handset launches at Carphone Warehouse. It was the most successful week we’ve ever had online, marking our most successful pre-order event ever with website traffic hitting record levels (up 63% wow). Perhaps surprisingly, over half of the traffic on the evening of the announcement came via our mobile website with mobile data up nearly 200% (wow). We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in the way customers access content and purchase technology, with as many people now as happy to access website content through the device in their pocket rather than the PC on their desktop.
“We also noticed that two thirds of the increased mobile traffic came from iPhones and iPads – it’s apparent that huge numbers of current iPhone users are interested in upgrading their device to the newest Apple handset.
Carphone Warehouse is the only retailer that can connect and upgrade iPhone 5 customers on all networks with prices starting from free for £46 per month, which puts us in a great position to be able to provide our customers with exactly what they want from handset and tariff. Our business has the strongest heritage of iPhone over any other UK retailer; we’ve sold all variants since the original handset launched in 2007 and estimate to have shifted more than 1.6 million of the devices in that time.”
For a bit of context, the Nokia Lumia 800 sold 1 million units in its first quarter!!