Apple Says iPhone Pre-Orders Are Beating Last Year’s Pace

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Investor expectations are high for the new iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, right, which were introduced at a huge product release event last week in San Francisco.Credit Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

Apple said Monday that global pre-orders for its latest iPhones were on track to beat last year’s sales of 10 million devices in the first weekend, which was a record for the company.

“Online demand has exceeded our own forecasts for the pre-order period,” Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said. Ms. Muller said the company was working to catch up as with demand and that the phones would be available in Apple retail stores next Friday.

Investor expectations are high for the new iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, which were introduced at a huge product release event last week in San Francisco.

Walter Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG, said the sales figures this year include China, “more than doubling the addressable market for launch day compared to last year when China was not launched until mid-October. It’s therefore not surprising that sales would be up.”

After Apple introduced the first iteration of its larger-screen iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the company posted an $18 billion profit, the most profitable quarter ever for a publicly traded company, in its fourth quarter of fiscal 2014.

IPhone pre-orders began over the weekend and the phones go on sale Sept. 25.