The first batch of iPhone 5 smartphones has already sold out on Apple’s (AAPL) website, and that’s helping the company stock price reach new heights.
The Cupertino-based company’s website is saying the iPhone 5 will now take two weeks to ship. That means people who didn’t snatch up an iPhone from Apple when it started pre-orders at 12:01 a.m. will have to wait until at least Sept. 28 to receive their device, if they buy it from Apple.com.
Websited for AT&T, Verizon and Sprint — the three US carriers who will sell the iPhone 5 — showed delays ranging from a week to a month by Friday afternoon.
“Pre-orders for iPhone 5 have been incredible,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said. “We’ve been completely blown away by the customer response.”
Consumers can also show up at Apple retail stores as well as other companies’ stores on Sept. 21 to lock down an iPhone 5.
But the quick jump in sales, which once again caused the Apple.com website to go down at some points, pushed up the company’s stock price to a record.
Shares closed Friday at $691.28, up 1.2 percent to a record high.
It is not unusual for Apple products to sell out the first day. Orders for the previous iPhone 4S, the last product the company introduced before the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, surpassed 1 million in the first 24 hours, beating Apple’s previous one-day record of 600,000 sales for the iPhone 4.
Apple will be coming out with new cables in the next few months that will allow iPhone 5 users to connect their device to TVs and watch video, according to a report.
The Verge says Apple confirmed it will sell Lightning-to-HDMI and Lightning-to-VGA cables for the iPhone 5 that will be available in the “coming months.”
People were concerned that Lightning, Apple’s new iPhone dock connector, would be incapable of handling video when the company didn’t list that as one of its feature at its media event Wednesday or online following the event.
The wait time to purchase the cable could be an issue for people who use their iPhones to watch iTunes-bought movies, Netflix (NFLX) or other apps on their TVs as they’ll be unable to connect using a cable for at least some months.
In theory, however, users who own an Apple TV box should still be able to pass some content from their iPhone 5 to a TV using a feature called AirPlay.
But the Apple TV retails for $99. By comparison, the HDMI and VGA adapter cables for iPhone 5 will probably sell for between $30 and $40.
Reuters contributed to this report.
