Tim Cook took the opportunity to mention that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus launch was very successful worldwide, and that includes China’s pre-orders. Today, marks the first day of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus availability in China, but unlike previous iPhone debuts, the event was “decidedly low-key”, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Roughly 100 customers lined up this morning outside Apple’s store in Beijing’s Sanlitun shopping district at 8 a.m. The news outlet says this happened because the devices went on sale last night elsewhere, including from the country’s biggest carriers.
Past iPhone launches have drawn thousands of buyers who lined up in the night. This year, however, everything was different: only a handful of customers showed up, an hour before the store opened.
The calm scenes stood in stark contrast to Apple’s previous product launches in China, which were decidedly raucous affairs. On the first day of iPhone 4S sales in January 2012, a delay in the opening of the Sanlitun store sparked a near-riot that led to a temporary suspension of sales in its stores across China. That followed a fight between customers and Sanlitun store employees in May 2011 that broke out during the release of the white iPhone 4.
It is worth mentioning, though, that ahead of the official launch, Apple and its Chinese partners had taken 20 million pre-orders, making it the biggest rollout in the country.
