Reservations for Apple’s iPhone 6, 6 Plus in China reportedly hit 2 million in first 6 hours

We knew that China would welcome the iPhone 6 with a bang and till now we have only got incomplete stats from ITHome and Sina which have shown that retailers and carriers have booked more than 2 million reservations just six hours after opening their queues. The initial bookings were mostly for the 64GB iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models which are priced at almost $1000. This is surprising because they didn’t lunge forward for the cheaper of the options in the iPhone 6 range.

We have been receiving reports on the working of black market too and the eventual trend in the smuggling indicates that buyers were paying extreme premiums for the larger model and for gold finish, two options Apple appears to have made available with the Chinese market expressly in mind. A press release issued by Apple yesterday stated that pre orders from the company’s own retail online store are not going to start until Friday October 10 and the potential buyers can reserve the new iPhones beginning Tuesday October 14 for in-store pick-up starting Friday October 17.

The press release also revealed that the actual sale of the iPhones will not begin until October 17 and this included sales by carriers China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom and from Apple Authorized Resellers. But this announcement wasn’t enough to stop the carriers from booking their orders earlier.

The price for the new iPhone 6 is 5,288 RMB ($861 US) for the 16GB model, 6,088 RMB ($991) for the 64GB model and 6,888 RMB ($1122) for the 128GB model, while iPhone 6 Plus is priced at 6,088/6,888/7,788 RMB ($991/1122/1269) at the same three capacities. These prices in the Chinese market are higher than the ones in the US with US citizens enjoying lower prices. US pricing for unlocked iPhone 6 is $649/749/849 and iPhone 6 Plus is $749/849/949 for the same three storage options.

source: appleinsider