Last month, Apple announced a brand new version of its iPhone iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S features the new A5 processor, a redesigned antenna, an 8-megapixel camera that can shoot 1080p high-definition video, and supports AirPlay mirroring. People were expecting it to be the iPhone 5″ and folks weren’t expecting it to sell well. A few days after launch, Reuters reported that AT&T is seeing an extraordinary demandfor the new iPhone 4S, which became available for preorder at 12:01 am Pacific time on Friday, October 7th. Then, Apple blew everyone’s mind away when they announced that they sold 4 million iPhone 4Ses in just three days! This amazing sale number was generated just in the US. Speaking of sale numbers, when was the last time an Android or Windows Phone 7 sold that many in three days?
Apple has been continuing the international iPhone 4S rollout, and recently they made the iPhone 4S available in South Korea with carriers KT and SK Telecom. Local news site Chosunilbo reports that combined sales of the new iPhone 4S from South Korean carriers KT and SK Telecom reached 200,000 units when pre-orders opened on Friday. Just like when pre-orders opened in the US, due to unexpectedly high traffic the companies’ websites crashed at one point.
200,000 sounds amazing, eh? Not so fast! What’s even more amazing is that first day South Korean sales of the iPhone 4S beat those of Samsung’s copycat Galaxy S II. Samsung’s Galaxy S II only raked in 120,000 over three days in its native country despite accumulating 3 million pre-orders worldwide after being launched in April. Ironic, haha. The demand for the iPhone 4S in the region outpaced pre-orders for the previous generation iPhone 4 in the region, which totaled 130,000 in August 2010.
Unfortunately, the report also says that the company that isn’t copying Apple is still considering whether to file an injunction that would ban Korean sales of Apple’s device as part of its worldwide patent battle against Apple. Honestly, it sounds like they are desperate since Apple is raking in 52% of mobile profits while they are making a loss.
