Chinese carriers notch 1M official iPhone 6 & 6 Plus preorders in 6 hours
Apple's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus officially went up for preorder in China Friday morning and initial reports say the country's top three wireless carriers accepted one million orders in the first six hours of availability.
The preliminary numbers come from China's three biggest telecoms, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, reports Tencent News. It is unclear if the one million unit figure includes orders placed through the Chinese Online Apple Store, which also initiated preorders on Friday.
Along with the major players, more than 6,700 authorized resellers will have the new iPhones in stock when the handsets launch on Oct. 17, said a representative from China Telecom's Guangdong location.
Citing inside sources, the publication claims some 6.5 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models are bound for China Mobile, more than 50 percent of all supply entering the country on launch day. The world's largest cellular provider by subscribership uses a unique TD-LTE network that requires custom communications hardware. For the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple has demarcated handsets supporting China Mobile's flavor of LTE as model numbers A1589 and A1593, respectively.
Prior to today's authorized preorder launch, Chinese telcos and third-party resellers were taking reservations for the new iPhones. As noted by Fortune, website JingDong registered more than 9 million reservations as of 8:30 p.m. local China time. At the time of this writing, customer "appointments" showed a split of 4,626,516 for the iPhone 6 and 4,782,051 iPhone 6 Plus.
With first weekend sales hitting 10 million units last month, the iPhone 6 is already off to a record-breaking start, but that number is expected to swell as the company completes its fastest ever rollout to a total of 115 countries by the end of 2014.
Apple will begin in-store iPhone 6 sales in China one week from today on Oct. 17.
The preliminary numbers come from China's three biggest telecoms, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, reports Tencent News. It is unclear if the one million unit figure includes orders placed through the Chinese Online Apple Store, which also initiated preorders on Friday.
Along with the major players, more than 6,700 authorized resellers will have the new iPhones in stock when the handsets launch on Oct. 17, said a representative from China Telecom's Guangdong location.
Citing inside sources, the publication claims some 6.5 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models are bound for China Mobile, more than 50 percent of all supply entering the country on launch day. The world's largest cellular provider by subscribership uses a unique TD-LTE network that requires custom communications hardware. For the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple has demarcated handsets supporting China Mobile's flavor of LTE as model numbers A1589 and A1593, respectively.
Prior to today's authorized preorder launch, Chinese telcos and third-party resellers were taking reservations for the new iPhones. As noted by Fortune, website JingDong registered more than 9 million reservations as of 8:30 p.m. local China time. At the time of this writing, customer "appointments" showed a split of 4,626,516 for the iPhone 6 and 4,782,051 iPhone 6 Plus.
With first weekend sales hitting 10 million units last month, the iPhone 6 is already off to a record-breaking start, but that number is expected to swell as the company completes its fastest ever rollout to a total of 115 countries by the end of 2014.
Apple will begin in-store iPhone 6 sales in China one week from today on Oct. 17.
Comments
I thought there were ~4 million.
Boom Baby... Rock 'n Roll...
Go Apple, Go Go Go.
Intentions overcome the convenience.
The intention to buy an inconveniently bigger phone is bad. (And read this statement thrice in case Samsung).
iPhone 5S is the best. iPhone 6 is uncomfortable in pockets. Still I bought iPhone 6.
I thought there were ~4 million.
Previous reports were tracking "reservations"
These are orders (pre orders)
With the bigger iPhones, Apple will kick ass and take names in the whole of Asia. All the other manufacturers can thank the stars that Apple did not come out with a bigger screen iPhone last year already, it would have been a bloodbath for them regarding profits.
All eggs in one basket and all...
I thought there were ~4 million.
Maybe those were rumored pre-orders?
I hope there are no bulls in China's Apple shops.
Hmmmm... quite confusing. Over 9 million reservations but so far we have 1 million preorders.
Hmmmm... quite confusing. Over 9 million reservations but so far we have 1 million preorders.
In 6h, wait a while paduan (homage to star wars)
In 6h, wait a while paduan (homage to star wars)
What am I waiting for?
Wouldn't 9 million reservations equal 9 million preorders?
You seem to know the Chinese ordering system. Tell me how this works.
Damn it, I was just thinking Apple was doomed, and this happens...
I may be wrong, but perhaps only the people who made reservations can now preorder or get it in store on the 17th (or they at least get the priority). There's no rush to place the actual orders, they have until the 17th to do it and with a reservation it's guaranteed to go through. I'm expecting the number of preorders to steadily increase toward 9 million over the course of the week.
I may be wrong, but perhaps only the people who made reservations can now preorder or get it in store on the 17th (or they at least get the priority). There's no rush to place the actual orders, they have until the 17th to do it and with a reservation it's guaranteed to go through. I'm expecting the number of preorders to steadily increase toward 9 million over the course of the week.
That makes sense.
Jing Dong is an online retailer,kind of like China's Amazon. As far as I know, iPhones bought there are unlocked, where pre-orders are carrier specific. 9 million unlocked iPhones, hell that's how much Apple sold WORLDWIDE on launch week.