Apple received more than two million orders for its new iPhone 5 in the first 24 hours, the company said Monday. In the meanwhile, Samsung is already planning the release of Galaxy S 4 smarphone.
This is more than double the previous record of one million held by iPhone 4S. Demand for iPhone 5 exceeds the initial supply and while the majority of pre-orders will be delivered to Apple's customers on September 21, many are scheduled to be delivered in October.
iPhone 5 features a new 4-inch Retina display; an Apple-designed A6 chip; and LTE conenectivity - all while delivering even better battery life.
"iPhone 5 pre-orders have shattered the previous record held by iPhone 4S and the customer response to iPhone 5 has been phenomenal," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "iPhone 5 is the best iPhone yet, the most beautiful product we've ever made, and we hope customers love it as much as we do."
iPhone 5 will be available at 356 Apple retail stores in the US beginning at 8 a.m. local time on Friday, September 21.
iPhone 5 comes in either white & silver or black & slate, and will be available in the US for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model and $399 (US) for the 64GB model. iPhone 5 will be available from the Apple Online Store, Apple's retail stores, and through AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, select Best Buy, RadioShack, Target and Walmart stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. iPhone 4S will also be available for just $99 (US) and iPhone 4 will be available for free with a two-year contract.
iPhone 5 will roll out worldwide to 22 more countries on September 28, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Meanwhile, Apple's rival Samsung Electronics reportedly plans to the Galaxy S4 at the Mobile World Congress in February next year, officials of the company and its local parts suppliers told
The Korea Times on Sunday. The report claims that the Galaxy S 4 will be the company?s most powerful smartphone to date and will include a 5-inch display, a quad-core Exynos processor and 4G LTE capabilities.
Samsung has also been attacking iPhone 5 with its latest advertising. The mobile carrier took out a full page ad to highlight the differences between its own Galaxy S III.
Samsung's latest ad says "It doesn't take a genius" and then goes on to compare the two devices, with the Galaxy S III sporting a much longer feature-set.
In short, the Galaxy S III boasts a bigger screen (4.8 inches versus 4 inches), a higher resolution display (1280x720 HD versus 1136x640), longer battery life, twice the amount of RAM (2GB versus 1GB), a microSD card slot for expandable storage, micro-USB port and NFC support.
On the other hand, the iPhone 5 is thinner and lighter than the Galaxy S III, has a - not fully benchmarked yet - A6 processor, and a camera that's supposed to excel in low light situations.