Apple’s own websites couldn’t handle the traffic and were reported to have crashed repeatedly throughout the night, both in the United States and overseas.
The iPhone 6 Plus proved to be highly popular and ship dates for the new 5.5-inch model have now been pushed out by three to four weeks at the Apple website. According to tech website Re/code, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) quotes a mid-October ship date for the iPhone 6 Plus and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) lists a ship time of 35 to 42 days.
This situation is not unusual for a new iPhone. Neither is the new sales record. The iPhone 5 outsold its predecessor at launch and the iPhone 5c/5s outsold the iPhone 5. Partly that is due to having the phone available in more countries at the pre-order date. This year’s launch does not include China, which helped push the launch of the 5c/5s to a record high of 9 million units. First month’s sales of the iPhone 5 totaled around 5 million.
Another reason for the delays in shipping the iPhone 6 Plus could be that Apple did not make as many of these larger-screen phones. This probably had a little to do with less-than-optimal forecasting and a little to do with manufacturing the large-screen model.
The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 has also run into supply problems on some models, according to some reports.
A report from Taiwan’s Digitimes said Apple expects to ship 80 million of the new iPhones by the end of the year. September shipments alone are estimated at 10 million combined for the two new models, which is higher than last year’s 9 million, but incremental growth would be far less.
READ ALSO: What the iPhone 6 Was Supposed to Have, but Didn’t
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