Apple Confirms iPhone 5 Pre-Orders Start at 12:01 a.m. Sept. 14
Get that credit card ready for a late-night purchase. Apple has confirmed to Wired via e-mail that it will begin accepting online pre-orders of the iPhone 5 during the wee hours of the morning beginning at 12:01 a.m. PDT on Sept. 14.
Context & Ripple Effects
The timing lands almost exactly where the rumor mill said it would: an August iMore report had pegged September 12 for pre-orders with a second release wave in early October, and Apple has now confirmed orders open at 12:01 a.m. PDT on Friday, Sept. 14 — the morning after Tim Cook opened the company's post-Steve Jobs keynote. The cadence mirrors last year's iPhone 4S pre-order window, which also began on a Friday.
The pickup around this story is unusually broad because the pre-order date is the anchor for a cluster of carrier and hardware questions: The Verge reports Sprint's iPhone 5 lacks HD Voice and that neither Verizon nor Sprint models support simultaneous voice and data, MacRumors flags Cricket and C Spire joining on Sept. 28, and the Wall Street Journal is already probing whether the all-digital Lightning connector is 'a pain in the neck' for existing accessory owners.
First-order effects
- Buyers on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint can lock in units starting 12:01 a.m. PDT Friday, while Verizon and Sprint customers ordering immediately are buying phones that cannot do simultaneous voice and data on those networks.
Second-order effects
- Accessory makers face a forced retooling cycle around Lightning — Apple has confirmed Lightning-to-HDMI and Lightning-to-VGA cables are months out, and a Lightning-to-Micro USB adapter ships for European markets — leaving early adopters dependent on Apple's adapter pipeline.
Third-order effects
- The Sept. 28 arrival of regional prepaid carriers Cricket and C Spire points to iPhone distribution decoupling from the big-two U.S. carriers, widening the addressable base each launch cycle.
The trend: Apple is standardizing a midnight-PDT Friday pre-order ritual while expanding the iPhone beyond exclusive carrier deals, making launch-day logistics itself part of the product cycle.