Given the sheer population of China along with its market’s considerable interest in Apple products as a whole, it’s not too much of a shock that the launch date of the iPhone 6 in China is, once again, lagging considerably behind the UK / US roll-out. In the countries where the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is already available, Apple has enjoyed impressive early sales, but if Chinese reservation figures are anything to go on, the best may still be yet to come. Pre-orders have not yet commenced, but many retailers have started taking reservations in advance of the October 17th release, and having originally reported that 2 million iPhone 6s had been reserved in just 6 hours, the sum total for the first-day of reservations stands at a whopping 4 million.
With the three major carriers in China all on board with the iPhone 6 and notably, able to offer customers top-speed 4G in supported areas, the Chinese market’s transition from a developing market into a thriving hub for companies like Apple is well under way, and while each new iPhone is always gratefully received in China, the iPhone 6 is poised to smash records.
The report on the reservation numbers arrives courtesy of Tencent, and reservation outfit Jingdong also has the scoop on precisely which devices users are choosing. At the time of the initial report when reservations had hit the 2 million mark, the iPhone 6 Plus was at 1,189,083 compared to the iPhone 6’s 1,106,379, and while it’s unknown whether those figures have shifted one way or the other, it does seem that the world is undecided with regards to whether bigger – or indeed, smaller – is better.
What is a little more certain, however, is that the iPhone 6 is the most popular that Apple has ever released, and by the end of this month, we’ll have a fairly good idea as to just how well the new handset line-up has performed.
With Samsung currently scrambling to prepare the Galaxy Note 4 for launch in the United States, Apple is sitting rather pretty as it looks ahead to the launch in China, and although the Korean company’s new phablet is certainly an institution to many Android users, the lengthy delay between the IFA announcement and launch may have considerable, potentially negative repercussions as far as market share is concerned.
(Source: Tencent [Google Translate])
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