Apple's iPhone 4S now available for pre-order ahead of Oct. 14 launch
As promised, Apple has begun pre-orders for the anticipated iPhone 4S. Pre-ordering is now available in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom through Apple's website.
Context & Ripple Effects
Pre-orders open one day after Tim Cook and Phil Schiller introduced the iPhone 4S at Apple's October 6 event, and hours after a reminder that the ordering window would open Friday. Notably, all seven launch countries — the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK — order through Apple's own website rather than carrier storefronts, keeping the transaction inside Apple's channel.
Two constraints frame the story: syndicated coverage at Daggle points out that even unlocked iPhone 4S units cannot be used for network swapping, so the pre-order decision binds a buyer to a carrier up front; and commentary continues to weigh the retained 3.5-inch screen against the larger displays on rival Android and Windows Phone 7 devices.
First-order effects
- Buyers in the seven launch countries can reserve an iPhone 4S a week before the October 14 store date, with Apple's website capturing order volumes before any carrier or retail partner records a sale.
- Because even unlocked units are carrier-bound, each pre-order forces a network commitment at purchase time, compressing carrier-switching decisions into this one-week window.
Second-order effects
- Carriers now compete for allocation of a device whose demand Apple measures centrally through its own storefront, weakening the leverage they typically hold over launch inventory.
- Android and Windows Phone 7 handset makers pushing larger screens face the size comparison directly during the holiday-quarter buying period this launch anchors.
Third-order effects
- If the vendor-run, multi-country pre-order becomes the default launch mechanism, the customer relationship and its sales data shift structurally from carriers to the device maker.
- Screen size remains the contested specification line between Apple's hardware choices and the larger-display strategies of its mobile OS rivals.
The trend: Smartphone launches are consolidating around vendor-operated, multi-country pre-order windows that pull the customer relationship away from carriers and toward the device maker.