Apple kicked off sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in Australia at 8 am in Sydney (6 pm Thursday evening Eastern Time) to large crowds. One of the people waiting in line who has been at the head for multiple launches said there were more than 1,000 people and far outnumbered the iPhone 5 launch two years ago. The strong showing mirrors the 4 million pre-orders that the company received in the first 24 hours even without China being in the first wave of countries receiving the new models. Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s head of retail and on-line stores worldwide, was in Australia for the launch. I would expect Tim Cook to show up at both Palo Alto, California, stores on Friday and possibly a few others in the San Francisco area.
It may turn out that supply in the stores is very limited, at least for the 6 Plus. According to one MacRumors reader many stores in Australia only received 1 iPhone 6 Plus. Additionally, BGR reported that there is ‘no chance of finding an iPhone 6 tomorrow’. At Apple’s partner locations BRG said ‘stores have been receiving shipments all throughout the day, and out of all the new iPhone 6 models received, typically only about 2%-3% are iPhone 6 Plus units, and in only one color.’
iPhone 6 Plus models with 128GB of memory are being listed on eBay at around $1,700 to $1,900 (vs. a list of $950). The highest bid I have seen is $1,600 plus $15 for shipping with 27 bids and one hour to go.
Apple also has some pre-orders scheduled to be picked up at Apple stores. This has two benefits for Apple in that it saves on paying FedEx or UPS to deliver the units and gets people into the stores to buy accessories.
Australia’s lead-times for the 6 Plus range from 3 to 6 weeks
I have been tracking iPhone 6 lead-times since last Friday at various Apple on-line websites and some of its partners since the first day that pre-orders started. I have developed a Google Doc with the information. In checking tonight the lead-times in Apple’s Sydney store is 3-4 weeks for almost all the iPhone 6 models and is that for all the 6 Plus models. Vodafone Australia finally released lead-times for the iPhone 6 Plus and it is 6 weeks with the iPhone 6 at 2-3 weeks.
