Ah, bless. Apple says it has been “blown away” by interest in the iPhone 5 since pre-orders opened on Friday.
Showing the usual Apple penchant for superlatives, a company spokesperson hailed the iPhone 5 pre-order response as “incredible”. Seems that £30 price bump is really turning people away, then...
The iPhone 5 was announced on Wednesday, with pre-orders kicking off in the UK on Friday morning (though not at midnight, as I over-enthusiastically claimed on the day).
And as if anyone expected anything different, Apple spokeswoman Nat Kerris confirmed to AllThingsD late on Friday that “pre-orders for iPhone 5 have been incredible. We’ve been completely blown away by the customer response.”
It reinforces just how bullet-proof Apple is as a brand right now. Every new iPhone release has been met with plenty of criticism, so there was no surprise in seeing the usual nay-sayers lining up to bad-mouth both the latest iPhone itself and iOS 6 on Wednesday.
But unlike most previous occasions, the iPhone 5 is pricier than the model it replaces, and its arrival coincides with one of the busiest periods we can remember for rival devices being unleashed on the market.
Yet as sure as day follows night, there seems no evidence to suggest any of that has affected mainstream interest in the iPhone 5. We say that without having any actual figures to go on, of course, but true to form and exactly as expected, pre-order shipping estimates for all iPhone 5 variants are now listed as “2-3 weeks”, while the first diehard devotees/idiots/attention-seekers (delete as preferred) are already camped out on Regent Street.
All is normal with the world, then.
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