I’d imagine a lot of people are going to say the first day of iPhone 5 pre-orders did not go well. Actually, I’d imagine a lot of people will say the first hour didn’t go well. Here’s how it looked from where I sat. Five minutes 'til midnight PDT (3:00 AM where I live) there was no access to the Apple Store online, as had been the case most of the night. Four minutes. Three minutes, two minuets, one minute... and here we go... still waiting... for one minute... two minutes... three minutes... five... 10... then @ericof on Twitter tells me he’s placed his order.
And I’m still looking at Apple’s “We’ll be back soon” sign rotating through languages.
He’d ordered his through the iOS app, which I’d removed from my phone forever ago. Quick to the App Store, re-download and there, big as you please, is the ability to order the iPhone 5. On my laptop, the store is still promising to open again soon so I ordered iPhone 5 through my iPhone 4, which felt a little weird.
There were a few timeouts - about five minutes of those - but by 25 minutes past the hour, I had a confirmation email from Apple with an order number and everything.
The store didn’t come back up for pre-orders until 42 minutes past the hour. So, yeah... it was a bit late.
Still, we’re rocking, we’re rolling, we’re one hour and 17 minutes into the pre-order parade... and Apple shows shipping times for iPhone 5 slipping from 9/21 to “Available to Ship: 2 Weeks.”
I’d imagine a lot of people are going to say the first day of iPhone 5 pre-orders did not go well.
The question in my mind is does the slip in shipping times indicate production shortages, which have been rumored for the past few weeks, or does it signal what some financial analysts said was coming: the biggest launch for a consumer electronics product ever?
It’ll be interesting to hear what Apple says, assuming Apple says anything, which is not a safe assumption.