Early this morning, Apple issued a press release stating that the company received an astonishing two million pre-orders for the new iPhone 5 within the first 24 hours.
Previously, the record for the most iPhones pre-ordered was held by the iPhone 4S – selling approximately one million the first day of availably. This year, Apple has more than doubled the number of iPhones sold.
‘iPhone 5 pre-orders have shattered the previous record held by iPhone 4S and the customer response to iPhone 5 has been phenomenal,’ said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. ‘iPhone 5 is the best iPhone yet, the most beautiful product we’ve ever made, and we hope customers love it as much as we do’.
Furthermore, Piper Jaffray analyst, Gene Munster published a research document suggesting that Apple’s iPhone sales figures for next weekend may fall somewhere within the range of 6-10 million units.
Munster outlined that his prediction is based on the initial two million units sold on the fist day and his comparison of last year’s numbers:
Given the 2 million pre-orders, we remain confident that Apple can deliver 8 million (range of 6-10 million) iPhones in the launch weekend. The reason we are confident in the 8 million is two-fold. First, initial 24 hour pre-orders for the iPhone 5 were up 100% y/y from the iPhone 4S. Last year, pre-orders accounted for 25% of total weekend launch unit sales. Assuming the same initial pre-order/retail distribution, the pre-order total would suggest 8 million launch units.
Seeing as last year, the iPhone 4S surpassed one million pre-orders within the first 24 hours and four million units sold during the device’s launch weekend, Munster and associates “remain confident” that Apple will sell approximately eight million iPhone 5 units this weekend!
With strong initial pre-order figures, and a shocking projected number of sales following the devices release, the iPhone 5 will undoubtedly be Apple’s most popular iPhone model yet. Stay tuned for complete coverage on Apple and their soon-to-be released iPhone 5.
