iPhone 5 Sets Sales Record with 2 Million on First Day, Says Apple

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U.S. mobile carrier AT&T also said its sales broke earlier records.

"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, the head of Apple's marketing, in a statement issued Monday.

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Schiller said iPhone 5 sales had "topped two million in just 24 hours," over twice as much as last year's iPhone 4S first-day sales.

The two million cannot be directly compared to public remarks Apple made last year, when it said it sold over 4 million iPhone 4S handsets in the first three days of pre-sales.

Analysts were expecting Apple to again reference opening weekend sales, and had forecast numbers as high as 10 million.

Nonetheless, Brian White, a financial analyst with Topeka Capital Markets, noted the strong iPhone 5 sales.

"The iPhone 5 pre-order volume [for the first day] handily beat our estimate of 1.3 million to 1.5 million," said White in a note today to clients. "Clearly, the iPhone 5 is off to a very strong start."

Minus a year-to-year comparison, White still anticipated a significant uptick in iPhone 5 sales over the Friday-Sunday stretch. Apple opened its online store at 12.01 a.m. PT Friday, and exhausted the supply it had set aside in just an hour.

White now believes his previous estimate of 5 million to 5.5 million iPhone 5 smartphones during the first three days was conservative. "We expect a meaningful jump in the three-day sales results for the iPhone 5 compared to the iPhone 4S," said White.

His iPhone 5 sales projection for September remains at 10-12 million, also a conservative number, he added today.

Apple took iPhone 5 pre-orders in nine countries -- including the U.S., Canada, France, Japan and the U.K. -- and will kick off in-store sales in those markets, two more than in 2011, on Friday, Sept. 21. The following Friday, Sept. 28, Apple plans to launch iPhone 5 in another 22 countries, all but one -- New Zealand -- in Europe.

Earlier Monday, AT&T also claimed the iPhone 5 had broken previous iPhone sales records, saying the new model was "the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever offered." The carrier did not cite numbers, however.

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