The iPhone 4S is Apple’s best-selling device yet, according to a press release from the company on Monday announcing that 1 million phones have been sold in the first 24 hours after they were made available for pre-order online Friday morning.
That easily surpasses the previous record of 600,000 pre-orders in the first 24 hours for the iPhone 4.
“We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, in a statement. “The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.”
Several pre-order hubs, including Apple’s and AT&T’s websites, were brought down briefly on Friday morning due to overwhelming demand. At the time of this posting, the websites of all three major U.S. wireless providers’ that carry the iPhone 4S – AT&T, Verizon and Sprint – were up and running.
Sales numbers were undoubtedly helped by the fact that this is the first time the iPhone has been available through Sprint, the nation’s third-largest wireless carrier, which counts 52 million subscribers. Sprint is also the only carrier that currently offers an unlimited data plan with the iPhone 4S. Unfortunately, Sprint isn’t sharing its specific sales numbers yet, only delighting in its newfound windfall.
“We are very, very pleased with the initial first day of iPhone 4S pre-orders. Today’s [Friday’s] sales and the overall customer experience greatly exceeded our expectations. We look forward to bringing iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 into our retail stores on October 14,” as Sprint’s VP of Product Development, Fared Adib, said in a statement provided to TPM.
Indeed, the cheapest iPhone 4S, the $199 16GB, is already sold out on Sprint’s website at the time of this posting.
But it is also worth noting that Sprint’s customer base is broken down into 33 million post-paid subscribers and 19 million prepaid subscribers. Prepaid customers aren’t as likely to want to upgrade to the iPhone 4S because they are probably more cost-conscious, according to business analysis site Trefis.
And overall, it seems that the mass disappointment that ricocheted around Twitter and other social immediately following the October 4 release of the iPhone 4S (which many had hoped would be complimented by an iPhone 5) was a bit premature and more than a bit overstated.
That said, it is interesting to note that Facebook users in particular seemed more enthusiastic about the iPhone 4S than other social media netziens, according to the All Facebook blog.
The iPhone 4S will hit Apple Stores, wireless providers and other retail outlets on Friday, October 14. That’s also the day pre-orders will be shipped out.
