iPhone 5c Pre-Orders to Begin at 12:01 AM Pacific Time on Friday, September 13
While Apple announced at yesterday's media event that pre-orders for the iPhone 5c will begin on Friday, September 13, the company has not yet specified at what time it will begin taking orders.
Context & Ripple Effects
The timing detail closes out a now-familiar launch sequence: after the iPhone 4S opened pre-orders on a Friday in October 2011 and the iPhone 5 followed the same midnight-Pacific pattern in September 2012, Apple is again letting orders flow at 12:01 AM PT — this time for the first year it is launching two iPhone models at once, with Tim Cook unveiling both at the September 11 media event.
What makes the hour worth watching is what happened on the other side of last year's window: within a week of pre-orders pushing iPhone 5 shipping estimates out to 3-4 weeks, Apple was visibly straining to move hardware, and the company has confirmed it is once again running the complex operation of shipping millions of units from China to shelves worldwide.
First-order effects
- Buyers in the initial launch countries get a defined moment to reserve either new iPhone before stock allocations tighten, with Apple's online store and carrier channels going live simultaneously at 12:01 AM Pacific Friday.
- Carriers and retail partners finalize inventory commitments against whatever pre-order volume lands in the first hours, locking in their launch-week mix between the two models.
Second-order effects
- If demand mirrors the 2012 pattern, shipping estimates through Apple slip quickly, forcing buyers toward carrier stock or resellers and repricing the secondary market during launch week.
- A split lineup splits the supply chain too — component and assembly capacity allocated across two phones rather than one, so the ratio of 5c-to-5S pre-orders directly shapes which model sees shortages first.
Third-order effects
- Midnight-Pacific pre-order windows are hardening into an annualized ritual that turns launch night itself into a public demand gauge, with shipping-estimate movement standing in for sales numbers Apple does not break out per model.
- Running two simultaneous iPhone lines points toward Apple managing multiple demand curves and staggered supply waves rather than a single flagship cadence, making each fall's logistics performance a structural test of the company's scale.
The trend: Apple is institutionalizing the fall iPhone launch as a clockwork logistics ritual — fixed midnight pre-order times, staged country rollouts — where the speed of shipping-estimate slippage becomes the market's first read on demand across an increasingly multi-model lineup.