iPhone 6 Plus sells out within hours, Apple reports “record number” of pre-orders for new iPhones, AT&T says demand is higher than past two years
Larger iPhone 6 Plus Sells Out, “Record Number” of iPhone Pre-orders — Yep, lots of people tried to order new iPhones as pre-sales began just after midnight on Friday.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the fourth straight September Apple has opened pre-orders to a demand surge it describes in superlatives: the carrier sellouts of October 2011, the two million first-day iPhone 5 pre-orders in 2012, and the "incredible" launch demand Tim Cook's company cited in September 2013 all set the baseline. What is different this time is where the pressure lands — the new, larger 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus sold out within hours of midnight pre-orders opening, while the smaller 6 remained orderable.
The sellout is also the first hard read on whether customers will pay up for a big-screen iPhone after two years of Android competitors owning the phablet segment. AT&T's claim that demand exceeds anything in the past two years is a carrier-side confirmation, not just Apple marketing, and the story drew pickups from Bloomberg, Ars Technica, Business Insider and others — unusually broad syndication for what is essentially an overnight order-status update.
First-order effects
- Buyers who waited past the early hours face weeks-long ship delays or store queues for the iPhone 6 Plus specifically, while Apple's own "record number" framing sets expectations for its official first-24-hour pre-order tally.
- AT&T and rival carriers get an immediate upsell window: the Laptop Mag comparison of trade-in deals among carriers and third-party services shows the sellout instantly becoming a pricing battleground for upgrade subsidies.
Second-order effects
- Supply constraints on the 6 Plus shift purchase intent toward the cheaper iPhone 6 or toward whichever carrier still shows inventory, giving carriers leverage to steer buyers into contracts and trade-ins rather than lose them outright.
- Android phablet makers lose the differentiation argument they held while Apple had no large phone — their flagship launches this fall now compete directly against a device whose scarcity itself is generating demand signal.
Third-order effects
- If large-screen iPhones keep selling out, Apple's component orders force suppliers into another capacity-ramp cycle, and the industry's upgrade economics tilt toward bigger devices carrying higher prices and margins.
- A pattern of hour-scale sellouts at every launch normalizes pre-order scarcity as a marketing instrument, making official unit counts — not availability — the metric carriers and investors anchor on each September.
The trend: Smartphone demand is consolidating around annual launch events where a single premium model's sell-through, measured in hours, becomes the market's early verdict on form-factor bets like the move to larger screens.