Remember that time when Wall Street thought China’s market meltdown would destroy Apple?
Apple Selling Out iPhone 6s in China, Early Data Suggests
Maybe Apple did not shit bed in China after all.
The Verge
The worry that Apple’s next big market for iPhones was crashing sent shares tumbling and prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to write to CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Aug. 24 to reassure investors. The market had every reason to worry. In the first nine months of Apple’s fiscal year, more than $46 billion worth of Apple’s sales came from Greater China (the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan) accounting for more than 25 percent of its overall sales ($182.2 billion).
The day is barely over on the first day Apple’s new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus was made available for pre-ordering globally and early data suggests Apple has little to worry. Demand is stronger in China than in most regions of the world including the U.S.
According to this iPhone Inventory blog which tracks the back-order status of the various iPhone models by way of screen shots of Apple’s estimated wait times as displayed on the Apple Store website, the wait time the big screen iPhone 6S Plus in China is running at three to four weeks, and two to three weeks for the 6S as of noon Pacific Time today.
Following China, demand in the U.K. looked strong too with delivery time for several models of the 6S Plus reaching the three to four-week range and reaching two to three weeks on the on Rose Gold variants of the 6S.
In the U.S. demand appeared strongest for the iPhone 6S Plus across all three major wireless carriers: T-Mobile shows delivery times for several variants of the iPhone 6S Plus in at three to four weeks while Sprint shows them all in the two to three week rang. AT&T and Verizon are showing the longer delivery times for the higher-capacity models of the 6S Plus, while the 6S is showing a Sept. 25 delivery date for all models except for the Rose Gold model at T-Mobile.
One caveat to the data is that there’s no indication of how much inventory was allocated by region or carrier. It’s also the first day of pre-orders and this data is about as preliminary as you can get. Apple usually gives a more detailed look at first-weekend sales on the Monday after a big launch. More to come later.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
