China Unicom announces that 100,000 iPhone 5s and 5c phones were pre-ordered

It’s been days since the pre-order for the iPhone 5c started and yet Apple hasn’t bragged about the millions of iPhones it has sold in the first 24 hours. The iPhone 5, for example, scored 2 million pre-orders in the short time period, the 4S managed a million and the iPhone 4 scored 600,000 pre-orders in the first 24 hours way back in 2010.

So, what’s going on with the iPhone 5c, is it doing equally well? China Unicom, the county’s second biggest carrier, has reported that 100,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s have been made (and they only started taking them today). Pre-ordered iPhone 5c units will arrive by September 21, while the 5s is listed as out of stock right now.

Note that 100,000 pre-orders on China Unicom for the iPhones isn’t much as the iPhone 5 alone scored 300,000 pre-orders.

This year China Telecom, for instance, the country’s third biggest carrier, will be spending 15% less money subsidizing both iPhones, compared to the iPhone 5. Analysts speculate that China Unicom will follow Unicom’s example and reduce its subsidies for the new iPhones.

The big fish, however, is China Mobile, the world’s biggest carrier with 740 million subscribers, and Apple has reportedly struck a deal with it, too, but so far nothing has been announced. It was expected that the cheaper iPhone 5c will draw Chinese customers away from cheap local Android-based phones, but the price might still prove to be too high.

So, why is Apple and US carriers quiet on the iPhone 5c pre-order numbers? We can only guess at this point, but Apple’s stock is still going down since the September 10 announcement of the two iPhones. As for the higher-end model, the iPhone 5s, this time around the Cupertino company will forgo the pre-order and just release the phone on September 20.

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