Preoders for the iPhone 5 went live at midnight tonight and, true to form, they went like hotcakes. You may remember that it took 22 hours for the iPhone 4S and about 20 hours for the iPhone 4 to sell out of its pre-order, launch-day stock.
The iPhone 5 took just about 60 minutes. Yep. One hour after pre-orders went live tonight, Apple.com shifted shipping expectations from one to two weeks due to the overwhelming demand.
Demand for the phone caused problems on Apple’s website and several of the wireless carriers’ sites, as many users saw error messages as they attempted to buy the phone. While there were no problems for the 4S, the iPhone 4 also had pre-order issues.
The iPhone 5 was the subject of seemingly endless rumor posts all summer and when it finally was released, it was received positively but didn’t receive the usual level of gushing reviews. The changes look great–the bigger screen and faster Internet are my personal favorites–but the device certainly isn’t so much better than the iPhone 4 and 4s to validate it selling out pre-orders 20 times faster.
And yet, people still are buying it in massive numbers.
“Available to ship: 2 weeks”…man that last week it’s gonna feel like you have an old cement block in your pocket.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore that the machine runs so efficiently and keeps exceeding expectations. But I am. Mostly because of how rampant the obsession is to buy the next generation of iPhone as soon as possible.
MG Siegler wrote yesterday about the way Apple showcases these events, discussing the turn and the prestige. But a couple of sentences really jumped out at me beyond the presentation of the phone. The bottom line:
That’s why Apple is now the most valuable company in the world. And that’s why you will buy an iPhone 5. And an iPhone 6. And beyond.
That’s what really matters. The bottom line sits atop everything else. And the bottom line is that despite the phone not having many drastic changes and a lack of an overwhelming “wow” factor, so many people went online in the middle of the night on a workday to shell out hundreds of dollars for a pre-order that sites were crashing and the first batch of product sold out.
That’s why Apple is the most valuable company in the world.
