With the iPhone 5C, available to preorder as of Sept. 13, Apple ended its tradition of sharing how new orders have smashed sales records.
The Apple iPhone 5C, the company's first colored-plastic iPhone and its first to debut at $99, became available to preorder Sept. 13. How many people have rushed to order one, however, isn't yet clear.
Apple has a habit of making its early successes known. The iPhone 5 became available for preorder Sept. 14, 2012, and three days later, Apple put out a statement saying that preorders had topped 2 million in just the first 24 hours—that it "shattered the previous record held by iPhone 4S."
After the iPhone 4S became available for preorder, requests topped 1 million in a single day, Apple said in an October 2011 statement, "surpassing the previous single day preorder record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4."
"We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said at the time," and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do."
Apple isn't saying. It hasn't released a statement, and requests for comment went unanswered.
In China—a market for which the lower-cost plastic iPhone 5C is more directly intended—response is said to be modest.
China Unicom, China's second-largest telecom, announced Sept. 16 that it had received more than 100,000 orders over a five-day period, according to China.org. Last year, the carrier recorded more than 200,000 orders for the iPhone 5 in just 48 hours.
Carrier China Telecom isn't revealing its preorder numbers, the report added. And while Apple and China Mobile—China's leading and the world's largest carrier—are said to be working on a deal, Apple hasn't announced it yet.
In a first, Apple introduced the iPhone 5C along with the higher-end iPhone 5S at an event in Beijing Sept. 11, a day after the phones received their U.S. unveiling. Traditionally, new iPhones have arrived in China months behind their U.S. release, but on Sept. 20, both phones will go on sale in both countries. The gesture speaks to Apple's courtship of China, which it expects eventually to replace the United States as its number-one revenue generator.
Source : eWeek
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