Apple launched the iPhone SE today in the United States and eleven other countries and territories, prompting a number of early adopters looking to get their hands on the refreshed 4-inch smartphone to line up over the past twenty-four hours.
Early morning lines for the iPhone SE could be found in a handful of major cities, ranging from Sydney, Australia to Miami, Florida, but many other Apple Stores had no queues whatsoever as excitement was unsurprisingly more tepid compared to the launch of a flagship smartphone like the iPhone 6s.
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In fact, the launch of the iPhone SE was arguably overshadowed by Model 3 reservations, which began today at Tesla stores and galleries, some of which are located directly adjacent to or within close proximity to Apple retail stores.
At the Tesla store in the Bellevue, Washington shopping mall pictured below, for example, the queue at around 10:30 a.m. local time was significantly longer than many of those outside of Apple Stores today.
The line in front of the Tesla store in the Bellevue mall is absurd. pic.twitter.com/pk6NfZVbeb — Lorenzo Pasqualis (@lpasqualis) March 31, 2016
people in line in front of #Tesla stores in #Zurich + #Duesseldorf (note: waiting for #electriccars , NOT iPhones) pic.twitter.com/MCw3d1lKlW — Stefan Hajek (@Stefan_Hajek) March 31, 2016
Investment bank Piper Jaffray performed a spot check of iPhone SE stock in select American markets and found that 90% of stores had the device in stock:
We checked 100 Apple Stores in NYC, LA, Dallas, and Minneapolis market areas for availability of the Space Gray iPhone SE 16GB and found that 90% of stores checked had the device in stock. We did spot checks for other device colors (Gold, Rose Gold, Silver) in about 25 stores and found a similar ~90% availability.
For new orders, Apple currently lists delivery estimates of between April 6 and April 21 in the U.S. depending on the iPhone SE size, color, and carrier selected.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)People have been able to buy this phone for years, it's called the iPhone 5S.
No ... it's not. That's like saying the iPhone 6 and 6s are the same because they have the same body and screen size.I just went over to my Apple Store to try to get my hands on a 9.7" Smart Keyboard Cover. Both sizes were completely sold out, and there were tons of people at all the tables. So did the Apple Store traffic where I live overshadow the Tesla 3 launch?
People have been able to buy this phone for years, it's called the iPhone 5S.
The iPhone 5S was missing a lot that the SE has, so no you haven't been able to buy it for years.People have been able to buy this phone for years, it's called the iPhone 5S.
Wow, I definitely would have upgraded to the 5s from my 5 if I had known that the 5s had an A9 chip with 2GB of RAM. Stupid me skipped the 5s for the 6 and only got an A8 processor with 1GB of RAM!Now to figure out why Apple lied and told everyone that the 5s had a mere A7 inside of it...