Apple sells 600,000 iPhone 4 despite pre-orders website glitches

Apple Inc said yesterday that along with its carrier partners, it took pre-orders for more than 600,000 of its new iPhone 4 in a single day yesterday despite technical glitches on the websites that occurred after they were flooded with order demands from customers trying to book the iPhone 4 that went on sale yesterday.

Apple said this was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than was anticipated by the company itself.

The huge sales numbers resulted in many order and approval system malfunctions and AT&T, the carrier partner of Apple for the iPhone 4 said that it was suspending pre-ordering in order to deliver the orders that it has already taken.

''Given this unprecedented demand and our current expectations for our iPhone 4 inventory levels when the device is available June 24, we're suspending pre-ordering today in order to fulfill the orders we've already received,'' AT&T said in a statement.

''The availability of additional inventory will determine if we can resume taking pre-orders,'' the statement added.

AT&T said that pre-order sales yesterday were 10-times higher than the first day of pre-ordering for the iPhone 3G S last year. In addition to unprecedented pre-order sales, yesterday there were more than 13 million visits to its website from customers wanting to upgrade from iPhone 3G to iPhone 4 – a number that is about 3-times higher than the previous record for eligibility upgrade checks in one day.