Apple Inc. has provided the following statement to CNBC:
We expect iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be incredibly popular with customers and we are thrilled to begin taking pre-orders on September 9. Customers will receive their new iPhones starting September 16. In years past, we’ve announced how many new iPhones had been sold as of the first weekend following launch. But as we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first customer pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7. These initial sales will be governed by supply, not demand, and we have decided that it is no longer a representative metric for our investors and customers. Therefore we won’t be releasing a first-weekend number any longer. We are reiterating the financial guidance for the September quarter that we provided on July 26.
JUST IN: Apple says it will not be releasing iPhone pre-order numbers as it traditionally has in the past. pic.twitter.com/kGXfPcUkKB
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) September 8, 2016
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, initial sales have been governed by supply, not demand for some time now. We’ll get iPhone’s quarterly unit sales numbers with Apple’s earning release in late January, as usual.