“Apple Inc shares rose on Friday, touching a record high after the company said some customers must wait two to three weeks for the new, slimmer, faster iPhone 5, suggesting strong global demand for the smartphone that accounts for half of its revenue,” Poornima Gupta and Sayantani Ghosh report for Reuters.
“Apple’s U.S. [online] store was projecting shipments for the iPhone 5 would take two weeks to fulfill, with analysts saying the date slipped within an hour of the start of presales,” Gupta and Ghosh report. “The company’s website showed buyers in United Kingdom, France and Germany would have to wait as much as three weeks to receive orders when the iPhone 5 starts shipping next Friday, the first day of deliveries.”
Gupta and Ghosh report, “The new model would also be available in Apple’s stores next Friday for walk-in purchase. Retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Best Buy Co are also taking preorders for the new iPhone at their stores. ‘Clearly, iPhone 5 fever is in full swing,’ Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White said… Apple shares rose 2 percent at mid-day to $696.68 in heavy trading on the Nasdaq. The shares earlier touched an all-time high of $696.98.”
Read more in the full article here.