Apple expecting to break sales records as iPhone 6S hits shelves
Apple’s latest batch of iPhones has gone on sale and it’s expected to hit a new record for opening weekend sales.
Apple Inc.
$169.30
13:09 26/04/24
Dow Jones I.A.
38,239.66
04:30 15/10/20
Nasdaq 100
17,718.30
12:15 26/04/24
The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus went on sale Friday at 0800 BST in the UK, with fans camping outside stores to be the first to get their hands on them.
Similar scenes were seen worldwide in the 11 other countries where it went on sale, with New Zealanders being the first in the world to get their hands on it.
Outside the Apple Store in Sydney, Australia, one woman reserved her place in the queue with a robot with an iPad mounted on it.
"I obviously have my work and other things to attend to and can't spend two days lining up so my boss at work suggested I take one of the robots down and use it to stand in my place," she told media through the iPad outside the store this week.
The phones, which were unveiled by Apple chief executive Tim Cook on 9 September, are a minor upgrade from the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launched in 2014.
Sales of those devices in 2014 hit 10m in the first weekend, and Apple said it expected sales to beat that record this year.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said he expected opening weekend sales to be around the 12 to 13m mark.
However outside the Apple Store in Covent Garden, the scenes were described as “a lot less hectic” than last year by onlookers spoken to by The Guardian.
Around 400 people queued up outside the flagship store, but the metal barriers erected in the cobbled streets in front of the store were not full to bursting as they have been previously.
Meanwhile users who were hoping to order one of the flagship phones online will now have to wait up to two weeks for it to be delivered.
The phone has also had mostly positive reviews, with The Verge’s Nilay Patel praising it as the “best iPhone ever made”, and The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern telling people “if your iPhone is more than two years old, this is the phone to get”.
However not everyone is happy – while TechRadar’s Gareth Beavis was impressed with the 3D Touch features, he said “it’s very similar to 2014’s model”.
Brian Chen of The New York Times advised “it would be wiser to hold off until the next version”.
The key features in the new models include 3D Touch, where it can sense how hard users are pressing on the touchscreen allowing app developers to add more functionality.
It also brings 4K video to the iPhone as well as live photos, capturing the moments before and after a photo is taken.
It has also been upgraded with Apple’s A9 processor and the latest version of iOS9.
The iPhone 6S is selling for £539 to £699, while the iPhone 6S Plus retails between £619 and £789.