Crowned as the fastest performing smartphone, Apple has sold over 5 million iPhone 5 over the launch weekend. The launch took place in 9 countries (US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the UK) on September 21 and demand was so strong that immediate pre-orders were closed in just an hour after opening and users were getting at least 2 weeks of shipping time afterward.
It seems like Apple might be having a touch time meeting consumer demand since many stores ran out of stock early. Initial reviews of the device have been very good although critics have been pointing out the hardware as just evolutionary and iOS 6 as a mere refinement instead of a major upgrade. Compared to its major rival, the Galaxy S3, Apple has sold a lot more units in 3 days than the 20 days it took for Samsung to sell 20 million units. That’s approximately 200,000 units per day for Samsung compared to around 1.6 million iPhones per day for Apple. Not to forget, Galaxy S3 was launched in 28 countries and 100 carriers, compared to just 9 countries for iPhone 5.
iPhone 5 ships with a larger 4-inch display with a better color reproduction than iPhone 4S along with an improved 8-megapixel camera, LTE wireless technology, superb performance thanks to a blazing fast A6 processor and 1GB of RAM and iOS 6. Apple is selling the phones way faster than it’s able to make them so delays in shipping time are expected.
The next wave of iPhone 5 launch will be on September 28 in the following 22 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Further countries will be added to the list in December.
