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Apple

iPhone 6 in China: 3 carriers took 1 million pre-orders in 6 hours

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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October 10, 2014, 8:55 AM ET

Apple’s new iPhones are hot commodities in China. Millions of customers, scalpers and resellers registered in advance just for a chance to pre-order either the iPhone 6 or the iPhone 6 Plus, both of which are expected to be in short supply.

The pre-order period began Friday, and the first preliminary numbers are in.

Within six hours, according to Tencent news, one million orders had been taken by the three largest carriers, China Mobile (CHL), China Telecom (CHA) and China Unicom (CHU).

Apple’s Chinese website also began taking pre-orders Friday, as did, according to Tencent, 6,700 authorized resellers.

Before the official order-taking began Friday, one Chinese website, JingDong, had registered more than 9 million reservations, a kind of pre-pre-order. The split as of 8:30 p.m. Beijing time:

  • iPhone 6: 4,542,448
  • iPhone 6 Plus: 4,694,853

.

According to Apple, iPhone 6/6+ sales in 10 countries topped 10 million in the first three days. The company did not say which screen sizes or colors sold best.

Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.

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By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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