AT&T: the iPhone 5 most successful iPhone launch ever

Update: Apple announces 2 million iPhones sold in 24 hours

Updated to reflect comment from AT&T; Apple announcement

Every time a new Apple device comes out, it seems like everyone in the world just has to have one. It would be logical, though, that eventually this kind of hysteria would die down. So many people actually own a version of that device, so less people should be in the market to buy one. Instead, it actually gets worse every time, with the latest Apple release breaking sales records.

AT&T has declared the iPhone 5 to be “the most successful iPhone launch ever”, the company announced Monday.

“AT&T set a sales record with iPhone 5 over the weekend, making it the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever offered,” AT&T said in the press release. “Customers ordered more iPhones from AT&T than any previous model both on its first day of preorders and over the weekend.”

An AT&T spokesperson would not provide any specific numbers, including how many iPhones it had actually sold so far, but there are many indications of how popular the phone already is.

This past Friday, the initial inventory of the latest iPhone sold out in a single hour, pushing the ship date back a week. The demand for the phone was so high that the websites for Apple, AT&T and Sprint all went down due to high traffic.

The estimated shipping currently stands at two to three weeks.

Since pre-ordered phones will not be shipping out until the 28th, at the earliest, it is already being reported that lines began forming outside Apple stores eight days before retailers are even going to begin selling the phone on September 21st.

The high demand for the iPhone 5 goes all the way back to when it was widely speculated that it would be released last year. Apple released the iPhone 4S instead, which was essentially just a retooled version of the iPhone 4, a move which has no doubt created even higher demand for the new version.

A year ago, Opinionaided, the instant mobile Q&A app, surveyed over 1,000 of its users who are existing iPhone owners to find out if they plan to upgrade to the iPhone 5. Nearly half of respondents said yes.

A recent survey from Changewave in July found that nearly a third of all respondents said they were “somewhat likely” or “very likely” to purchase an iPhone 5 when it becomes available.

SellCell.com, a website for consumers to trade in their old cellphones and smartphones, reported last week that trade-ins for iPhones were up 800% in August, compared to the same time last year, and that trade-ins of the iPhone 4S were up nearly 450 percent over trade-ins of the iPhone 4 during the month before the debut of the iPhone 4S in September 2011.

Hopefully you're not too sick of Apple mania, since I have a feeling we're about to go through this all over again when the iPad Mini comes out next month. 

At the time of this post, shares of Apple were up over 1% at $698.76 in trading on Monday.

Update:

Apple has announced that pre-orders for the iPhone 5 were over two million in its first 24 hours, doubling the previous record of one million set by the iPhone 4S. It took the iPhone 4S nearly three days to sell nearly two million units.

“iPhone 5 pre-orders have shattered the previous record held by iPhone 4S and the customer response to iPhone 5 has been phenomenal,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said in a statement.

“iPhone 5 is the best iPhone yet, the most beautiful product we’ve ever made, and we hope customers love it as much as we do.”

With every release, Apple devices have been selling faster and faster

In October of 2001, the first iPod sold only a quarter of a million units in its first year, while it took 74 days for the first generation iPhones to sell one million units after its release in December of 2007. The iPhone 3GS went on to hit one million sales in its first weekend in July 2008. 

Following its debut in March 2010, the original iPad sold 300,000 units in just its first day, and went through half a million by the first week and a half. It took less than a month for the device to sell one million. The original iPad sold 15 million units before the release of the iPad 2, which took only took only 28 days to sell one million units. 

Apple could not be reached for comment.

(Image source: www.stageslearning.com)