Apple's iPhone 6 China Lead-Times Are Better Than The US And Europe

I have been monitoring Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus lead-times since consumers could start ordering them for the first wave of countries on Friday, September 12, three days after they were announced. The official start date for ordering Apple's new iPhones in China started today, Friday, October 10, which was Thursday afternoon, October 9 in the US. I have developed a Google Doc with the information I have seen along with the number of Chinese iPhone 6 reservations that have been entered.

Approximately 10 million reservations were placed

JD.com is a website that was monitoring consumers placing reservations on the three wireless Chinese carriers along with some other distributors and channels which started about a week ago. When the numbers first came to light on October 3^rd there were just under 3 million reservations for Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on its site and there were approximately another 1 million that it was not monitoring.

Reservations in China really took off on Saturday, October 4, when JP.com’s site saw 4 million iPhone 6s and 6 Pluses get ordered taking the reservation number from 2.8 million to 6.8 million. The last time that I saw numbers on the website was Thursday morning Pacific time which was early Friday morning in China and there were over 8.6 million reservations.

As a side note the split between the 6 and 6 Plus was almost equal the six days I monitored it at 49% for the 6 and 51% for the 6 Plus. I believe we can pretty much ignore the websites that are tracking which iPhone models that are in use to get a feeling for what people want until Apple can supply enough of the 6 Pluses to catch up to demand.

China iPhone 6 lead-times are better than the US or Europe

It is still probably too early to see if these lead-times hold but initially 8 of the 9 iPhone 6 models are showing October 17, which is the first day that Apple will make them available with the Silver 64GB at 1-2 weeks.

For the 6 Plus 5 of the 9 are showing October 17 with all three color 64GB models at 2-3 weeks and the Space Gray 128GB model at 1-2 weeks. This is another indication along with the data I have found on a site that tracks Japanese smartphone demand that indicates the 64GB models are the most in demand which will help Apple’s average selling price for the iPhone.

The US lead-times have remained the same for both the 6 and 6 Plus since the first weekend they became available on Friday, September 19. The 6 is at 7-10 business days and the 6 Plus is at 3-4 weeks. I believe they are being delivered faster than this but if supply was robust enough (and Apple may be waiting to see how strong China’s demand is) it would start dropping the lead-times.

Europe’s and Australia’s lead-times pretty much match the US and of the countries that I follow Hong Kong and Singapore are showing Currently Unavailable but I believe they can be reserved and picked up.