South Korea’s mobile carriers said Friday their first preorder batch of Apple’s latest iPhone X were sold out in just three minutes after being launched, apparently due to supply shortages.
According to a new report from Cult of Mac, South Korea’s biggest carrier – SK Telecom – has confirmed that it has exhausted all of its iPhone X pre-order stock in 3 minutes – in contrast, the initial iPhone 7 stock took 20 minutes a year ago.
Other carriers including KT Corp and LG Uplus also say they sold out of their pre-order iPhone X handsets within minutes. “The initial inventories were … too low to meet the demand,” an official from one mobile carrier said.
The carrier told Yonhap News that the number of units available for the iPhone X was less than half of the iPhone 8 which went on sale earlier this month. The carrier didn’t reveal the number of units which were available ahead of pre-orders, but industry watchers estimate that almost 150,000 units went up for sale, which was lower than 200,000 iPhone 8 units launched a few weeks back.
The second batch of the iPhone X was also sold out in less than two minutes later in the morning.
Considering the price $1319 CAD of the iPhone X, it would have been expected that Samsung’s home ground of South Korea would display more enthusiasm towards the Galaxy Note 8 series of devices.
