iPhone 4S pre-orders break record

UPDATE Oct 11: iPhone 4S pre-orders topped 1 million in 24 hours, the company told media overnight.

The previous pre-order record was 600,000 in a day, held by the iPhone 4.

Investors seemed impressed. Apple shares [NAS:AAPL], which were flat on the first day of trading after Steve Jobs' death then fell 1.5% the next, closed up 5.14%, ahead of a 3.5% broader market surge on Eurozone news.

Apple has been taking pre-orders via the web ahead of the 4S' launch in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, UK and Australia this Saturday NZ time (23 more countries will see the new iPhone before the end of the month; NZ is not among them. A local release date has yet to be set).

What's going on here?
To a degree it seems - cough - that Apple fans don't mind the new model looks the same as the old model (though with tastier hardware inside, and the attraction of the enhanced voice commands with "Siri". In an lab somewhere, Apple minions are possibly trying to train Siri to handle the New Zilund accent).

But there's also another factor in play. 

Historically, Apple had one iPhone 4 carrier in the US: AT&T. With the launch of the iPhone 4, it added a second: Verizon. And with the launch of the iPhone 4S, it has added a third: Sprint.

A choice of three phone companies is better for US consumers, as it in Australia (where Optus, Vodafone and Telstra; see a comparative pricing table here). 

It's good for Apple, too. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sprint's price of admission to the iPhone party was $US20 billion - the cost of committing to buy at least 30.5 million iPhones.

Sprint will reportedly lose money on the deal until 2014, but seems to feel it had no other choice.

The lack of the iPhone is "the number one reason customers leave or switch," Sprint chief executive Jesse Hesse told an industry conference last month, according to the Journal.

In NZ: one
Here, Vodafone NZ is the only official Apple carrier (interestingly, Vodafone has told NBR it does not have an exclusive arrangement with Apple. It's just that Apple has chosen not to bring another phone company on board).

Telecom and 2degrees have made assertive guerrilla marketing efforts to lure iPhone users to their networks - possible because (unlike Australia), iPhones sold in New Zealand are not "locked" to any particular network - one undeniable advantage of being an Apple customer in this part of the world (although Vodafone NZ has also used it as an excuse to charge more for handsets on this side of the Tasman).

But as the official carrier, only Vodafone can offer handset discounts for contract customers.

Telecom does an aggressive $800 cash offer to draw iPhone users onto XT (which is due to expire October 31 but will likely - as before - rollover). But that's the potential bounty if you chose a $110 a month plan; a lesser contract could yield you an $80 kick-back or less. And unlike a usual iPhone carrier subsidy, the offer is only available to new Telecom customers. Hmn. Life in New Zealand.

OCT 10 The pending iPhone 4S looks identical to the iPhone 4.

This could be a reflection of new CEO Tim Cook, who is famously focussed on logistics. Delivering a bunch of hardware upgrades (faster processor, higher res camera, new antenna, HSPA support for faster downloads) inside the same shell is no doubt the cheapest manufacturing option.

Shareholders may love that.

The fan boys and girls, not so much.

Within minutes of the new model being unveiled, many noted the “badging” problem.

With the new model and the old model sharing the same exterior (and Apple never imprints a model number on a phone), how will the world know you’ve upgraded?

The show-off factor, as important in geekdom as anywhere else, is missing. The iPhone 4S seems a little too Cook, and not enough Jobs (RIP).

With the most intriguing Apple announcement from last week – iCloud – also available for older models (from the 3GS onward), there’s yet another reason to hold off on the new model.

Not that reason comes into it much with iPhone.

US media reports have Apple’s initial stock of the new model for North America, the UK,  Australia and other markets selling out – inferred from the fact delivery time has now been delayed from one to one to two weeks..

And a queue has already formed outside a flagship Apple Store in New York ahead of the official launch Friday (Saturday NZ time; there’s still no local release date).

Despite the iPhone 4 and 4S sharing the same form factor, Mashable – bless – has profiled new case designs for the 4S (a couple are pictured above; see a slideshow here). Any of them, of course, can be used with the 4. But, beyond that, who knows what brand lurks within, let alone what model.

Same goes with tablets. Not that you'd know, but here’s my Samsung Galaxy S II:

It’s a styly and super sleek tablet. But who would know? Wrapped up in its protective case (and all smartphones and tablets need them; none are rugged enough). It’s like driving around a hot sports car with a tarpaulin draped over it.

Bit of a whiney, first-world problem, you might say.

But as Forbes points out, we consumers - with our whiney problems and love of badging - are at the centre of the modern economic universe.

In "Why China doesn't have its own Steve Jobs," contributor Panos Mourdoukoutas argues that only a consumer-led economy can produce leaders (Gates, Jobs, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg et al) and companies that can discover and exploit new market opportunities (I picked up on some similar themes during a brief visit to Shanghai in 1998; here).