Last week, just as we finished our last issue of Faultline, as the first pre-orders were possible for the iPhone 4, both Apple and AT&T had to pull pre-ordering off their web sites, in AT&T’s case because the traffic was crashing their systems.
Apple released a public statement apologizing to customers who couldn’t order the device, but AT&T managed to take 600,000 pre-orders in one day, the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever had in a single day.
The web traffic was more than even Apple anticipated, resulting in order and approval system malfunctions, which meant customers were turned away or gave up on the ordering process when it took too long. The systems will be back online tomorrow (June 24) when the iPhone 4 comes into stock.
It wasn’t simply that 600,000 transactions brought down the AT&T site, but more like 13 million site visits, took place with many AT&T customers wanting to know if they qualified for upgrades.
That in itself is a significant level of web traffic, which AT&T said was three times the previous record for upgrade checks in a day. AT&T has suspended pre-orders too, in order to fulfill the orders it has already taken. That level of pre-ordering was about 10 times the first day of pre-ordering for the iPhone 3G S last year, so it looks like the appetite for iPhones in the US will continue to outstrip demand for some time to come.