Apple’s iPhone 6 Launch Biggest Ever: 10 Million Sold

Last week Apple said that it received more than four million pre-orders of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, leading some to wonder if the company would top its previous “first weekend” sales record of 9 million for the 5S/C. On September 19, the phones started arriving in stores for purchase by those who had not pre-ordered.

The result? Apple said earlier today that the company has to date sold more than 10 million iPhone 6/6 Plus devices:

Apple today announced it has sold over 10 million new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models, a new record, just three days after the launch on September 19. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the UK and will be available in more than 20 additional countries on September 26. The new iPhones will be available in 115 countries by the end of the year.

TechCrunch first made us aware of the press release.

Based on device-share data from app platform Localytics, I quickly estimated that more than 50 million iPhone owners in the US could be eligible for subsidized iPhone 6 upgrades. While that doesn’t mean they’ll all buy a new iPhone 6, these early sales suggest Q4 will be a very big one for Cupertino.

The more interesting question is whether the iPhone 6 will reclaim marketshare from Samsung and other Android OEMs that have offered larger-screen devices for quite some time. Bloomberg earlier reported that smartphone trade-in data suggests that some meaningful percentage of Android users would appear to be making the switch.