Yesterday morning I was telling you that the new iPhone 4S was completely sold in all 6 countries where Apple offers it for pre-order to its users. Just yesterday we told you that AT&T sold no less than 200.000 iPhone 4S terminals in 12 hours, this being the most "successful" launch of a mobile phone in the history of the mobile operator. However, in the US there are 3 mobile phone operators that ran out of stocks of iPhone 4S terminals in the first 12 hours and those from CNN supports that Apple would have sold no less than half a million devices during that period.
Despite early glitches that slowed down pre-orders, AT&T (T) announced Friday it had taken orders for 200,000 iPhone 4S units in the first 12 hours — "the most successful iPhone launch we've ever had." iPhone 4 pre-orders last year were 10 times greater than the iPhone 3GS's, and that was when AT&T was the iPhone's only US carrier. This year Apple is offering pre-orders to three carriers in the US: AT&T, with 98.6 million wireless customers, Verizon (VZ) with 106.3 million and Sprint (S) with 52 million. Given the pent-up demand at Verizon and Sprint, it's not much of a stretch to assume that Verizon also pre-sold at least 200,000 and Sprint, with half the customer base, another 100,000. That's a total of half a million units in the US alone.
500.000 units sold in the first 12 hours only in the US plus a few hundred thousand in the other 6 countries and it is likely that Apple has sold no less than 1 million units in just 12 hours from the opening of pre-orders. Last year iPhone 4 was sold in 1.7 million copies in 3 days, but iPhone 4S will easily surpass it because it is the most desired smartphone on the planet at the moment. Tomorrow Apple will most likely announce the results of the initial pre-orders and the disappointment called iPhone 4S will be a real success for Apple.
