AppleInsider Staff
Sales of Apple's highly anticipated new iPhones have begun, with the first units hitting customers' hands in Australia just minutes ago, following online orders started earlier in the day.
In Australia, the local time is now 8:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 20, meaning the iPhone has officially gone on sale at the country's local Apple Stores. The country is the first to officially launch the handset ahead of an 11-country worldwide rollout.
Ben Pasternak was one of the first to receive both the iPhone 5c and 5s, which are pictured above. Lines were expectedly long at launch, though the purchasing process was said to have gone smoothly.
Apple's iPhones will be rolling out around the world on Friday, with 11 countries taking part in the launch, up from 9 in 2012's iPhone 5 debut. Following Australia, customers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK and US will be able to place orders through the Online Apple Store, or brave lines at brick-and-mortar locations.
While iPhone 5c preorders have been live for one week, supply of the iPhone 5s is thought to be severely constrained. When sales of the 5s kicked off online in Australia, it was already showing a 7 to 10 day lead time compared to 1 to 3 days for the 5c. This is not to say the situation will be identical in other countries, though the pushed back delivery dates offer some vision into Apple's channel inventory.
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38 Comments
Gold iPhone 5s's have been extremely rare. The carriers have none and most Apple stores seem to have been given 5 of each capacity, so only the first 5-10 people in the queue got them. Will be interesting to see how the rest of the world pans out.
Already got mine, syncing it now. Interesting, capacity shows as 59.61 GB, my old 5 was 57
What kind/color did you get? Any indication on how availability was? How long did you have to wait in line? Sorry for all the questions, but curious minds want to know!
Online store in the UK was 7-10 business days on the 5s from the moment it went live.
Was at Castle Towers in Sydney. I heard someone 10th in line be told the days allocation of Gold in all capacities was exhausted. It's possible they had none at all and were not saying. Then again, if you were first in line and they had no Gold you would be angry. Maybe they had two of each. FWIW: I was about 60th in line. Got a Space Gray 16GB.