Customers pose for a group photo during the Singtel Apple iPhone 7 launch event held in Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Expo on September 16, 2016.
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With just days to go before Apple’s new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus begin shipping and appearing in stores, Sprint and T-Mobile are already reporting record numbers of pre-orders.
Sales in China will be the acid test for Apple’s year ahead. “But as we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7”.
“The fact that all iPhone 7 Plus models are constrained is a sign of the supply chain”, Ben Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg News. An index of searches on Baidu Inc, China’s most popular search engine, shows the new phone lagging both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5.
Customers who enter Apple Stores Friday, when the gadgets hit shelves, will not be able to purchase the sold-out phones on site, but they can continue to place orders for their desired models online, Apple said.
The majority of customers in the queue had pre-ordered their phones.
“It is something I have wanted for years so I am really pleased to have got my hands on one”.
Beginning Friday, limited quantities of iPhone 7 in silver, gold, rose gold, and black will be available for walk-in customers at Apple retail stores. IT architect Wellson Lee, 38, was the first iPhone 7 customer for local telco Singtel, heading for the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre to buy a black iPhone 7.
Pre-orders for the next generation iPhones started on September 9. The iPhone 7 will ditch the headphone jack for a Bluetooth-only configuration. To hold them over Apple reportedly gave some people, including one man who told Mashable he’s been waiting in line for 23 days, $100 gift cards.
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