It would appear that the pre-order systems at Apple and their carrier partners were struggling for a very good reason. Apple has announced that pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have crossed the 4 million mark, with a full week before actual retail sales begin.
There should be no surprise that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are already popular phones.
Apple is doing a lot of good things with iOS 8, and the increase in screen size for this next generation of hardware has a lot of people willing to make the upgrade. We usually see significant pre-order numbers for iOS products, but the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has broken all previous pre-order records for Apple.
To put this into context, Samsung shipped 11 Million Galaxy S5 units to retail partners in the first month their flagship was available to purchase. While Samsung never released pre-order numbers for that phone, Market Research firm Counterpoint claimed Samsung only sold 5 million units in the US during that first month. Samsung is without a doubt the biggest competitor to Apple when it comes to hardware manufacturers, which goes a long way to applying some scope to just how big Apple’s pre-order announcement is.
As is often the case with Apple product launches, keeping up with the demand as people line up to purchase the phone at retail locations is going to be next to impossible. We know that some of the larger Apple stores already have lines forming outside of them, but for many others it is going to be a long Thursday night if they expect to grab a phone on launch day.