The iPhone 5 has smashed pre-order records for Apple smartphones, passing the two million mark within 24 hours. That doubles the previous record of one million for the iPhone 4S.
Consumer desire for iPhone 5, released worldwide from Friday, exceeds the initial supply – meaning some pre-orders won't be shipped until October.
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"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.
The iPhone 5 offers a number of improvements over its predecessor. For example, it's 18 per cent thinner and 20 per cent lighter, the retina screen is taller, while the camera has been upgraded with new features such as panorama and low-light mode. It's also the first Apple smartphone to run 4G.
Most significantly, perhaps, is that the device runs twice as fast as the iPhone 4S, thanks to the new A6 processor. Benchmarking by Geekbench demonstrates that the iPhone 5 does indeed run twice as fast as its predecessor.
However, despite the increased power of the iPhone 5, Geekbench scores suggest that it doesn't quite match the quad-power of the Android-based Samsung Galaxy S3.
Nonetheless, the two million pre-orders don't only make happy reading for Apple, but if analysts' predictions are accurate, the surge of iPhone 5 sales will boost the economy too.
The iPhone 5 is released in the UK at 8am on Friday 21 September, with prices starting at £529. Queues forming outside Apple's flagship Regent Street store already, suggesting that some iPhone users remain as dedicated as ever to the device.
