Staggering 600k iPhone 4s pre-sold, huge mess left in its wake

It wasn’t pretty, but the iPhone 4 pre-order event has yielded a colossal number of units pre-sold: more than 600,000. To put that in perspective, the 3Gs sold one million units in three days of actual sales. Meanwhile, we’re still a week away from the iPhone 4’s first in-store sale day. Completely staggering.

If you’ll recall, there was some buzz earlier about the HTC EVO selling out and smashing all Sprint’s previous sales records. It turned out that initial report was wrong and it actually sold 200,000 units, which is an outstanding figure by any measure. Well, almost any measure. The iPhone 4 has now smashed both the actual number of HTC EVO’s sold and the erroneous early figure. And that’s without counting the units to be sold in-store on day one. In terms of sales, the iPhone is simply on a whole other level from its competitors. They can match the tech, but the sales are simply out of reach.

Of course, with figures like that, you can’t expect there to be no casualties. Warner’s assessment of the “disaster” is almost an understatement. On top of the folks who simply couldn’t cut through to get in on first day delivery, Gizmodo has been soliciting reader reports of order criss-crossing and personal information getting leaked. AT&T’s system held up about as well as Helm’s Deep, pretty good until we blew a big hole in it. Anyone who placed an order through AT&T’s online system would be wise to keep an eye on their account. Even though I placed my order through Apple’s system, I too have been double-checking for weirdness.

Despite the mess, one fact shines through: Apple can afford to make a lot more iPhones. Whether that’s physically possible or if they have any extra capacity to ship units is another matter, but they are sure don’t have to worry about excess supply.