Second Wave iPhone 6s and 6s Plus Launch Kicks Off in 40 Countries Around the World
Apple's iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are now available for purchase in Taiwan, marking the start of the second wave iPhone launch. Beginning October 9, iPhone 6s and 6s Plus availability is expanding to more than 40 countries …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two weeks after the record 13M-unit opening weekend, Apple is stretching the same launch over a longer runway: after the September 25 retail debut served the first markets, the second wave opens today in Taiwan and more than 40 additional countries.
The staged structure matters because it converts one demand spike into weeks of sustained sell-through — and the corpus shows Apple repeating it almost exactly a year later, when the iPhone 7 launched in 30 more countries alongside the Watch Series 2.
First-order effects
- Buyers in the 40+ newly added markets, starting with Taiwan, can now purchase the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus directly rather than importing or waiting.
Second-order effects
- Carriers and retailers in each new market enter a demand queue already validated by the record opening weekend, competing on stock and availability rather than on whether to carry the device.
Third-order effects
- The two-wave template hardens into Apple's standard playbook for flagship launches — visible again in 2020 when the iPhone 12 and iPad Air 4 rolled out globally in stores — trading a single-day peak for a multi-week global distribution curve.
The trend: Apple's flagship launches are evolving from single-day global events into deliberately staggered multi-wave rollouts that extend each product cycle's sell-through window.