Apple iPhone Pre-Orders Are "Amazing" -- Better Than Previous Models -- ATT -- September 12, 2014

Updates

September 12, 2014: update here. AAPL shares are surging ... up 24 cents. LOL.

September 12, 2014: .... on, one more thing ... Apple can't keep up; shipping of the iPhone 6 Plus already out to a full month (and I'm sure that's optimistic marketing ... but there's one more thing: the iPhone 6 Plus is not yet available in China.

September 12, 2014: Noted:

When Apple opened its website to pre-order the iPHone 6 Plus, the stated time was as expected 7 - 10 days for delivery.Three hours later, at 3:00 a.m. PT, the stated time for delivery for the iPhone 6 Plus was out to 3 - 4 weeks.

That gives you an idea how huge the demand is. The time for delivery of the iPhone 6 was still 7 - 10 days suggesting folks want the much bigger iPhone 6 Plus.

Macrumors is reporting:

AT&T executive Ralph de la Vega addressed the iPhone 6 launch in comments at the the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference this morning, citing "amazing" volume with hundreds of thousands of orders taken according to Fierce Wireless.

"It's amazing to see the volume," he said, adding that the "systems are rocking" and "everything is going well." He said demand for the new phones is "better than last year and they're better than the prior year [before that]."

"Every time there is a change in [iPhone] design, there's an uptake," he said. "I think this design is particularly good."

Carriers are battling fiercely for iPhone 6 customers, with many touting trade-in offers to help keep customers on board or attract new ones. Carriers are also pushing hard to convert customers to newer plans that uncouple device and service pricing, financing the device over a period of 12 months or more rather than offering outright subsidies.

Macrumors is also reporting:

Apple has timed its rollout perfectly. As highlighted by Pando Daily, Apple is taking advantage of regulatory changes that essentially require merchants to deploy new payment hardware in their retail stores over the coming year. This mass upgrade by over nine million merchants is the result of an updated credit card liability policy adopted by major credit card companies.

As of October 2015, any merchants that do not support EMV credit cards – smart cards with integrated circuits that enable point of sale authentication and help prevent fraud – will be liable for the fraudulent use of counterfeit, lost, and stolen cards. [...]

These EMV cards and the resulting transactions are far more difficult to counterfeit than what Americans consider "standard" credit cards. While EMV is the norm around the world, only about 14 percent of US merchants support this technology today and very few consumers own credit cards incorporating these chips.

As a result of this change in credit card liability, merchants are upgrading their payment processing hardware to support EMV credit cards and other payment technology. With Apple now on board with NFC, a greater number of merchants who are in the middle of this decision-making process may choose NFC-capable POS hardware so they can process payments via Apple Pay.

Original Post

 

Posted at 12:17 a.m. CDT; pre-orders at Apple.com start at 12:00 midnight, PDT.

Apple won't be the source, but I assume analysts will come up with an estimate of how many phones are pre-ordered over the weekend, and we will see stories of estimates on Monday.

Previously:

September 23, 2013―Apple® today announced it has sold a record-breaking nine million new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models, just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20. 

Maybe worthy of a poll.

Pre-orders begin at midnight, Thursday night/Friday morning. The first half of this complicated poll is how many iPhone 6's will be pre-ordered by Monday (over the weekend). Pre-orders will continue through the week.

On Thursday midnight/Friday a.m, September 19, orders of iPhone 6's will be available for purchase. The second half of this complicated poll is how many iPhone 6's will have been ordered/purchased by Monday morning, September 22?

The choices:

• 5 million / 10 million
• 10 million / 20 million
• 20 million / 30 million
• 10 million / 50 million

These numbers may be ridiculously low ... I have no idea. We may not even know the "real" numbers until many weeks from now. But it is what it is.