AT&T says iPhone 5 breaking sales records

PanARMENIAN.Net - With five days yet to go until its retail debut, Apple’s latest iPhone is already breaking sales records, AllThingsD reports.

AT&T said Monday, Sept 17 that the iPhone 5 is the fastest-selling iPhone it has ever offered. And while the carrier offered no hard numbers to support the claim, it did say that pre-orders for the iPhone 5 surpassed those of all previous models on the device’s first day of availability, and over the weekend as well.

Now, when the iPhone 4S first became available for pre-order last October, AT&T issued a similar boast. AT&T said the device’s debut was the most successful for an Apple product yet. But the carrier also revealed that it had received 200,000 preorders for the iPhone 4S in 12 hours. So if first day iPhone 5 pre-orders broke the record set by the 4S, we’re looking at sales that are presumably well in excess of 200,000. And remember, that was over just 12 hours in 2011.

Apple hasn’t yet commented on first weekend iPhone 5 sales, nor have its other carrier partners, Verizon and Sprint. But given this announcement from AT&T, the fact that ship times for pre-orders of device slipped from “by September 21″ to “2-3 weeks” about an hour after it went on sale, not to mention Apple’s assertion last Friday that it’s “been completely blown away by customer response,” and it’s likely reasonable to assume that there is significant demand for the iPhone 5 - demand enough to reach the first week sales of six million to 10 million that analysts have forecast, AllThingsD says.