Despite criticism from journalists and industry analysts, the iPhone 4S saw a record-breaking amount of pre-order sales yesterday on AT&T.
AT&T has said that initial demand for the iPhone 4S has resulted in the most successful iPhone launch in the carrier’s history. The nation’s largest wireless carrier has reported 200,000 iPhone 4S pre-orders in the first 12 hours of availability.
CNET reports:
“AT&T has seen extraordinary demand for iPhone 4S with more than 200,000 preorders in the first 12 hours alone, the most successful iPhone launch we’ve ever had,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.”
Sites like AT&T’s wireless portal and Apple’s online store struggled to stay online after pre-orders opened around midnight PST on Friday. Many customers were unable to place orders initially due to the large amounts of traffic crippling the carrier’s servers. More pre-orders were able to be placed later Friday morning once the traffic bottleneck had been subdued.
It’s difficult to compare numbers with the iPhone 4 launch, because at the time AT&T was the sole iPhone partner. Apple added Verizon to the iPhone roster in February of 2011. Sprint was just added this last Tuesday.
According to Reuters, the iPhone 4 sold a record 1.7 million units in the first three days of availability. Day one pre-orders for the iPhone 4 reached 600,000 units on all carriers worldwide. 200,000 iPhone 4S first day sales on AT&T in the US bodes well for the 4S being Apple’s best-selling smartphone yet. Numbers for Sprint and Verizon have not been disclosed at this time, nor have international sales been reported.
Shipping estimates do indicate that there is very high consumer demand for the iPhone 4S.
International shipping estimates for iPhone 4S pre-order slipped to 1-2 weeks only hours after pre-orders opened up for customers around the world. Shipping estimates have also fluctuated in the US, with Apple now giving 1-2 week estimates for iPhone 4S orders across all three carrier partners.
The iPhone 4S will officially go on sale in stores next Friday, October 14. Expect there to be lines.
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
62 responses to “AT&T: The 4S is the Most Successful iPhone Launch We’ve Ever Had”
I didn’t see this coming
I wasn’t one of them I am one of those lucky ones at&t says I must wait till 11-16 when I *fulfill* my iPhone 4 obligation to get my upgrade pricing but what I don’t get is one month of iPhone 4 must cost 250 bucks because that is the difference between iPhone 4S at no contract cost compared to iPhone 4S at a “upgrade/new user” price. So what was I paying for the iPhone 4 the first 11 months?
5 years I’ve been loyal and bought every new phone on day one it sucks that at&t is not letting one month slide like was done for the 3GS. We are loyal and signing a new 2 yr contract. I don’t see the big deal. Here i’ll sign 25 months. You win! It would have been nice just to be able to preorder it instead of having to wait 40 days(by then the wait from apple will be a month for an iPhone 4S)
I still can’t decide whether to go with the 16gb or 32gb… with siri and the great pic and video camera I am wondering if 16gb is enough..
Thats what happens when you sign a contract in which the cell phone company subsidizes most of the retail price for you. Technically your iPhone 4 isn’t yours until you’ve satisfied your contractual obligations. I’ll be enjoying my contract-free iPhone 4S on launch day.
You’re lucky. I have to wait till February.
I can wait a month I just wish I could pre-order now and maybe pick it up in store on 11-16 now it probably won’t be till 1/2012. lol
Ouch! I won’t bitch as much then. That sucks I am sorry to hear that. They need to let us do a turn in your old iPhone and upgrade to the new one. You can always resale an apple product for practically the price you paid for it in the beginning(should it be in good condition)
I’d base it on if you currently run 50% full or more. If your flash is more towards empty you’ll be fine. For me I have some largeish apps like TomTom. I also keep all my photos and videos if I can, and occassionally like to load some movies on it when travelling. Hence I would hit the limits and have to start housecleaning sometimes on my 16 gig 4. So when I pre-ordered the 4S I went for 32 gig model.
So AT&T supposedly has 3 tiers of customers. I read a thread about it somewhere, maybe it was here? Anyhow, for longtime customers who have never been late on a payment you fall into tier 2 and thus on an 18 month cycle. If you were late one month you might be dropped to tier 3. Unfortunate, and opaque to anyone outside AT&T but well that’s their way.
It really depends on how well iCloud and iTunes Match work. If they work seamlessly and you never even know that your music is not on your phone then you could really get by with 16. If you end up having to manage your storage space deleting things so you can download others that would be a real drag. Extra storage would be really handy if that’s the case.
This will be my first iPhone, I got the 64gb cause I think I might use the camera an incredible amount. Hoping iCloud makes syncing easy, ’cause that’s what I hate doing the most!
Journalists, industry analysts and bloggers have been about their own opinions, attempting to influence. The most recent lack of understanding of the direction in iPhone product advancement shows their increasing irrelevance.
COULD HAVE BEEN FAR MORE SUCCESFUL IF THEY HAD SCALED THEIR SERVER CAPACITY!
I really don’t get it. I work in a datacenter. Anytime we have a major project that gets crushed by load, we overplan for it next time. If we estimate our load will double, we’ll plan for having MUCH MORE capacity than that. One server wasn’t enough last time, throw 20 at it for next Big Day. Sure you may only turn out to need 2, but better too much than not enough.
Apple seemed in better shape than AT&T at least. For me, the AT&T undercapacity was the more limiting factor, even when Apple got it’s act together I still couldn’t upgrade my phone it would hang at the AT&T verification point.
So I live on the east coast and set my alarm for 2:55 am to make sure I got my preorder in first thing. I renewed with AT&T. I had the same issues ordering that everyone else did and didn’t get to make my selection until about a quarter til 4:00 am. At that time I got a message, followed by an email, saying that they would send me an email when I could complete my order. I got that email abou 20 minutes later. I tried to complete my order for about another 30 minutes, but wasn’t able to get through. When I finally got up for work, I was finally able to complete my order without any problem. All day yesterday through first thing this morning it said my phone would be delivered on the 14th. About 9 :00 am I got an email saying that due to an unexpected delay, my phone will now be delivered sometime between 10/24 – 10/30. That sucks! I should have just gotten two more hours of sleep and just ordered it in the morning.
I’m so glad that I got my 4S super early… hahahahaha everyone else who waited.. SUCKASSS!!!!!!!!
That fucking blows dude. lol
I think they were just disappointed that the 5 wasn’t launched. This seems incremental and it’s surprising how many people are going for it if 5 is going to be released in anything less than a year. Who knows what 5 will be, but since they added the “S” designation to this one, people are expecting 5 to be so much more. I guess if you need a new phone, though, or just like the latest even if it’s a stopgap, this will do. Apparently more people than the media predicted fit into those two categories.
Probably because everyone still has a 3GS so they want a new phone lol. I’ve seen a lot of people with just a 3GS.
That would be awesome! I can’t afford a 64GB. I have a DSLR that I bring with me everywhere anyway, so I really don’t need a larger capacity iPhone for photos. I do think, though, that I will be using the 1080P HD video recording a lot! :D That’s going to be so much fun! Video stabilization and everything. Omg. *excited*
That would be awesome! I can’t afford a 64GB. I have a DSLR that I bring with me everywhere anyway, so I really don’t need a larger capacity iPhone for photos. I do think, though, that I will be using the 1080P HD video recording a lot! :D That’s going to be so much fun! Video stabilization and everything. Omg. *excited*
Then a new one will come out in June. Wait for it. LOL.
I did like most set my alarm got up at 2:45am EST to pre-order 4 iPhone 4S’s. It took almost 2 hours to get 4 reservation codes then almost till 2:00pm to finally get 3 of the phones ordered. The 4th phone was going to be an added line to my family plan and it was impossible to order this phone. via Apple or AT&T’s website. It was like they we both locked from allowing me to get the phone. Called Apple was told it must be a limit to the pre order phones I could order. I said what about my reservation code she insisted if I had a code then Apple would call me ( yah right!). I finally call AT&T speak to rep one who tells me since I get a service discount because of my employer that I must talk with someone in the business line department. Told her it’s not a business a family plan, but was told I had to go through them. She transferred me and the next guy said he had to transfer me to a different person as this was not the department I was suppose to talk to. So now I am transferred to rep 3. He starts helping me then gets to the point where he says he has to call someone who has to verify my identity. So now I am put on with an India person I can barely understand who starts asking a series of multiple choice questions. Which of these banks is you mortgage with, which of these companies is a company you used to work for, which of these years did you buy your house in, and finally which of these ranges represents what your normal mortgage payment. Now fist 3 of these I new without issue, but the fourth I ask is the amount with or without escrow and with or without any extra principle I pay monthly. Since she is from India or somewhere foreign she has now idea what I am saying but asks the question and gives choices again. So answer with the range of my payment including escrow. Next thing you know she tells rep 3 the customer has answered 1 or more questions incorrectly and at this tine his account is frozen and he must go into a local att store to add the line. Then she hangs up and rep 3 explains this again to me. Now irate I go off on this guy how apologizes for my troubles and puts a 25 credit on my account but says I must go in the store. So now a customer pissed off. Who has never missed a payment in 4 years paid a company over $9000 for service is treated like a criminal and beginning to think maybe I should have switched to verizon, but damn I have already pre-ordered 3 other phones. So I go by the ATT store. Surprisingly there was no line. Was helped right away. But again was asked same questions again said I answered wrong. Then had to show two forms of picture id. Then it took 3 service people at the store and several calls to higher ups with AT&T to finally get my added line with another pre-ordered 4S… Kind of like buying a new car, your excited and pumped, then leave with your new car pissed of you got it from them. Oh even though I pre-ordered this phone it ships in 2-3 weeks. Not by the 14th I would have gotten if I could have used my reservation code I got from Apple. Damn AT&T….
Too bad even when I got through Apple it still said see ya at the Apple Store Oct 14 because Sprint isn’t in our system yet…….
But yeah, its a freaking iPhone launch Carriers!!! Look at all the disgruntled At&t customers, wake up At&t your not the only iPhone carrier now – didn’t they learn from their “exclusivity period” what happens on iPhone preorder day.
Don’t forget unlike Amazon Clould, iCloud doesn’t stream music to your phone. You still have to download it to your phone to play so that’s still a limiting factor. Plus if you have a lot of Apps then you will need the bigger storage.
That’s how two year contracts work buddy. I still think people forget that a lot of people didn’t get the iPhone 4 so the 4S is a huge upgrade from the 3GS, welcome to retina display lol. Yeah, everyone at my work with a 3GS says its an automatic upgrade to 4S. At this rate we don’t know if Oct is the new window of phone releases or this was a hiccup due to the OS not being ready to Steve Jobs declining health. I seriously won’t mind a new hardware release in June if it means a new OS in Oct lol.
Check out October 4th’s keynote. Eddy Cue says switching on iCloud automatically shows all your artists and playlists and “streams” them instantly. It may be downloading in the background but the implication is that the difference between streaming and downloading is inconsequential to the user. He also mentioned “intelligent” storage on devices which leads me to believe you won;t be bothered with “out of memory” messages. I could be wrong about the second scenario but it would be very un-Apple like in my opinion to bother users with the minute of manual space management.
I Ordered my iPhone on AT&T as Soon as they Started Taking Orders Online… Afterwards it said, Scheduled to be Delivered on 10/14/11… BUT, when i check my Order Status on AT&T.com it says Status is Back Ordered… I Hope they Deliver on the 14th… and I dont have to wait 2-3 Weeked to get my iPhone 4S… That would Suck! and it would mean they Lied when i First Ordered… but I was one of the Very First to Order it… So if I have to wait, everyone will also im Assuming.. I dunno!
Oh.. I hate being transfered to India or the Philippines… They are soooo Rude! … and They Don’t Understand a Thing!!!
My first too. I got the 64GB too. I got white cuz I just like the look. I have lots of white in my house. White floors too. I can hardly wait for the phone. But apparently I have to cuz shipping is gonna be slow. But beats standing in line forever on the 14th.
with 32GB. you be glad you did. I got 64GB. Crazy but I did it.
I hope yours gets ‘lost’ in the post! :P