Predictably enough, Apple said on Monday that pre-order demand for its new iPhones had outstripped supply. Less than a week after the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus made their debut, the vendor said it had clocked up four million pre-orders in the first 24 hours.
Shipments will start in the US and nine other countries this Friday while 20 more territories will be added on September 26. Analysts are predicting first-weekend sales of about 10m.
Most believe that a great deal of this will come from iPhone 4 or 4s users, who were not sufficiently tempted by last year’s 5s or 5c models, but will be lured by the larger screens of the new additions to the family. Janney Capital Markets analyst Bill Choi wrote in a client note that he attributed the high pre-order levels to “the large pent-up demand for larger screens on the iPhone, as well as a stabilization in the upgrade cycle that has already elongated to over 2.5 years in the US; we estimate over 315m iPhones in the subscriber base worldwide, of which over 100m are iPhone 4S or older.”
All this could add up to a “super cycle”, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brian White said, as reported by ZDnet. “Similar to super cycles that began in 2001 (iPod), 2007 (iPhone) and 2010 (iPad), we believe Apple is in the midst of another super cycle that begins with the rapidly growing ‘phablet’ market via the iPhone 6 Plus and extends into the wearable category in early 2015 with Apple Watch,” he said.
The larger the installed base gets, and the more Apple sales become reliant on upgrades rather than brand new users, the more it will need to be clever with its software design in order to ensure that customers do not just update their hardware, but find themselves consuming more content and services too. This is an important element of the vendor’s model and one which is challenged by the slowdown in the expansion of its base, as it finds itself challenged in the growth markets like China and India.