AppleInsider Staff
"iPhone 4S is off to a great start with more than four million sold in its first weekend—the most ever for a phone and more than double the iPhone 4 launch during its first three days," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "iPhone 4S is a hit with customers around the world, and together with iOS 5 and iCloud, is the best iPhone ever."
Sales of four million iPhone 4S units in three days more than double's the company's previous record of 1.7 million iPhone 4 units sold in the summer of 2010.
Apple also revealed that more than 25 million customers are already using iOS 5, the latest mobile operating system upgrade for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Those 25 million customers have made the upgrade in just five days of availability.
More than 20 million customers have also signed up for iCloud, the set of free cloud-based services offered by Apple for iOS and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion users. iCloud will remotely store users' data and push it to all of their devices, automatically.
The iPhone 4S is currently available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the U.K. Apple will launch its new iPhone in 22 more countries on Oct. 28, and it will be available in more than 70 countries by the end of the year.
A week ago, Apple announced that it had sold a million preorders of the iPhone 4S on its first day of availability. That provided the first hint that the iPhone 4S was on pace to have a record-breaking start when it went on sale.
The sale of four million iPhone 4S units at launch exceeds Wall Street expectations, which had called for Apple to sell around three million units over the weekend. Analysts have also called for Apple to sell around 25 million total iPhones this holiday quarter, which concludes in December.
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Amber Neely
81 Comments
Does this number include backorders that will not be delivered for weeks? Or is it only shipped and picked up...
If Apple had 4 million ready to go at launch, that is awesome!
I wonder how many (of which I am included) were duped into preordering from AT&T in store? My phone, which AT&T promised would arrive on 10/14 = 10/15, has not even shipped yet. Yet, I was able to walk into 2 AT&T stores on 10/14 and find that they both had over 300 extra iPhones after the small lines. Heck both stores still had a few iPhone 4S models as of 5PM yesterday. The lines were small because the stores pushed in-store preorders. Of course the store wouldn't allow for cancellation of the preorders so I could pick the phone up on 10/14. Instead I have to wait another 2 weeks for my "preordered" phone. Nice.
Lesson learned. NEVER preorder via AT&T. Anyone else have this problem?
Does this 4 million include pre-orders?
btw, I never trust pre-orders and will always prefer to wait in line.
I wonder how many (of which I am included) were duped into preordering from AT&T in store? My phone, which AT&T promised would arrive on 10/14 = 10/15, has not even shipped yet. Yet, I was able to walk into 2 AT&T stores on 10/14 and find that they both had over 300 extra iPhones after the small lines. Heck both stores still had a few iPhone 4S models as of 5PM yesterday. The lines were small because the stores pushed in-store preorders. Of course the store wouldn't allow for cancellation of the preorders so I could pick the phone up on 10/14. Instead I have to wait another 2 weeks for my "preordered" phone. Nice.
Lesson learned. NEVER preorder via AT&T. Anyone else have this problem?
Yup, and I preordered it on the online Apple Store itself within seconds of availability. I should be among the first to have one, but, look at that, I live in Canada, not a hundred miles north of the US and I have to wait 2-3 weeks to get it...
Half way to besting the MS Kinect and so far only 1/20 the time frame. The iPhone 4S is going to be hard to beat, except by other Apple products.