The day after both AT&T and Apple sold out of their pre-order allocations of iPhone 4s, we've gotten news that there were 600,000 pre-orders completed. Apple said that they set a record for number of pre-orders of any device and AT&T pre-orders were ten times what they received for the iPhone 3GS. It was not all good news for the two companies yesterday, though. Gizmodo received multiple tips from users saying that after logging into the AT&T site to pre-order the new iPhone, they were logged into someone else's account rather than their own. Apparently this was a result of AT&T overhauling their fraud prevention but failing to actually test the new system before iPhone pre-orders were live. AT&T responded by saying that they were unable to replicate the issue, but were looking into it anyway. After the iPad security breach, we're surprised that AT&T would let another incident involving customer security happen.
In the mean time, AT&T has suspended pre-orders of the new iPhone 4. This may be due to the security issues, or because they reportedly completed 13 million upgrade eligibility checks yesterday, more than three times the previous record. Overall, it seems like Apple certainly has a hit on their hands. 600,000 iPhone 4 pre-orders without any sort of advertising campaign is certainly impressive. If you weren't able to secure a pre-order, AT&T has said that some stores will have iPhone 4s on hand June 24th that will be sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. Apple's full statement on the pre-order issues yesterday can be read below. Did any of you encounter problems while pre-ordering an iPhone 4?
"Yesterday Apple and its carrier partners took pre-orders for more than 600,000 of Apple's new iPhone 4. It was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions. Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration. We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4 is in stock."
Via Engadget, Gizmodo (1), (2)
