The huge demand for the iPhone 4 has forced Apple to push back the delivery date for its latest device's pre-orders to July 14. The Apple Stores across the US have put up the board showing that iPhone 4 pre-orders will ship by July 14. Earlier, Apple had announced that it will ship the pre-orders by July 2.
Apple admitted yesterday that the huge demand resulted in "many order and approval system malfunctions.” "Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration," the company said in a statement. Referring to the surge in demand, David Yoffie, a professor of business at Harvard Business School, said to USA Today "It is impossible to guess that initial demand for a new product will be 10 times the prior year. Even for Apple, this surge in demand is unusual."
Apple said that it has already sold more than 600,000 iPhone 4s, the biggest for any other products launched by the Cupertino-based firm so far. But, pre-ordering an iPhone 4 is a tough task. First off, AT&T suspended early ordering due to rising demand. Best Buy, America's largest electronics retailer also halted accepting pre-orders.
AT&T's servers failed to cope with the unexpectedly high demand and they crashed. AT&T’s website also reported a technical glitch that exposed the personal information of some customers to other customers. AT&T defended itself saying the company was not able to replicate the issue on its end.
