Thursday Pre-orders

Another rumor that appears to have just been a guess was that Apple would open iPhone pre-orders on a Thursday rather than its usual Friday. This undoubtedly stemmed from Apple’s unprecedented choice of a Monday for its Glowtime event. It’s the first time in Apple history that a fall iPhone launch event has been held on a Monday (which, combined with the date, also led some to believe Apple would host an Apple Watch anniversary extravaganza), so some concluded that the earlier event date would also mean earlier pre-orders.

It was a logical assumption that turned out to be wrong. When you look at Apple’s event trends, there’s never been a fixed number of days between the event date and pre-order date. While Tuesday/Friday is the most common mix, Apple has also held its events on Wednesdays — typically when the Tuesday conflicts with Labor Day or 9/11 — but only once has it opened its pre-orders on a Saturday. That was with the iPhone 6s in 2015, but that was also the only year that shipments and in-store availability came 13 days after pre-orders rather than the following Friday, so there was more going on here than merely the Wednesday event date.