iPhone 6 Pre-Orders to Kick off Tonight at 12:01 AM Pacific
Following Tuesday's announcement of both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple announced plans to begin taking pre-orders for the devices on Friday, September 12. — Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T will all begin accepting pre-orders …
Context & Ripple Effects
The 12:01 AM Pacific pre-order slot has become Apple's fixed launch ritual: the same timing was used for the iPhone 5 in 2012 and the iPhone 5c in 2013, and even Verizon's first-ever iPhone pre-order window in early 2011 opened in the small hours with AT&T trade-in offers attached (Verizon's 3am ET opening). What is new this cycle is scale and scope — two screen sizes announced Tuesday, plus Apple's first smartwatch and the NFC-based Apple Pay unveiled alongside them.
The story traveled widely on announcement day, with pickups at 9to5Mac, BGR, SlashGear, Geek.com, Cult of Mac, TUAW and others, reflecting how much of the fall hardware calendar now hangs on this one ordering window.
First-order effects
- AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all open their own iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus pre-order queues tonight alongside Apple, so carrier choice is made at checkout rather than after launch.
- Buyers face a first-time sizing decision between the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, splitting initial demand across two devices instead of one.
Second-order effects
- The larger iPhone 6 Plus is the differentiated device this year, so its allocation becomes the scarce item carriers compete over, reviving trade-in and subsidy sweeteners like the ones Verizon used at its 2011 iPhone launch.
- Apple Pay's debut means every pre-ordered iPhone 6 ships with an NFC wallet onboard, giving the three carriers' payment ambitions a direct competitor baked into the handsets they are selling.
Third-order effects
- If the two-size lineup holds, Apple completes its move into the large-phone segment that Android vendors pioneered, compressing the differentiation those rivals had left.
- The bundled watch-and-wallet launch signals Apple treating the phone less as a standalone product and more as the hub of a wearable-plus-payments ecosystem, raising the bar for what a flagship phone launch must now include.
The trend: Apple's midnight pre-order cadence has hardened into an annual retail ritual, but each iteration now carries more than a phone — this one adds a smartwatch and a payments platform to the same ordering window.