On the evening of September 12, at 8 o’clock, the iPhone 17 series officially started pre-sale in China, causing the Apple official website to crash and multiple models to be sold out within seconds. The hashtags “Can’t access Apple’s website” and “Can’t grab the iPhone 17” trended on Weibo that night.
According to reports from various media outlets, at 8 o’clock when the official sale began, the Apple official website displayed an error message preventing access. On the official AppleStore channel, both the app and webpage were stuck on the “welcome page” situation, and it took 4 minutes to successfully enter the purchasing page.
Several e-commerce platforms in China also experienced varying degrees of slow loading issues. The JD.com platform showed a countdown message indicating “high traffic, estimated wait time of 15 seconds” on their official channel, requiring users to wait before entering. The Tmall platform’s flagship store also faced a “delayed opening” situation.
Driven by the enthusiasm to be the first to own the latest devices, all three models of the iPhone 17 series quickly sold out on various platforms. Just 1 minute after going on sale, all models on the JD.com platform were shown as “out of stock.” Links to purchase the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro Max on Tmall’s platform also displayed “sold out” after 2 minutes, while only a few models of the iPhone 17 Pro remained available. Subsequently, multiple rounds of restocking were conducted by the official store, but the shipping time was no longer set for “before midnight on September 19.”
After 20 minutes of pre-ordering, the Apple official website indicated that the delivery time for the iPhone 17 Pro series had been pushed back to October 14-21. JD.com displayed that the standard version of the iPhone 17 series had the highest number of reservations, with over 3.43 million people pre-ordering, followed by the iPhone 17 Pro Max with over 2.27 million reservations, and the iPhone 17 Pro with 1.81 million reservations.
Currently, the Apple official website has changed the release status of the iPhone Air to “release information to be updated,” and in red letters, it states that “all models will be released after approval.”
Reportedly, models released this time include the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max, with prices ranging from 5,999 yuan to 17,999 yuan.
Among them, the iPhone Air is the “thinnest ever” model recently released by Apple. In order to free up more internal space, the Chinese version of the iPhone Air has eliminated the physical SIM card slot and fully embraced the design of eSIM virtual SIM cards.
Additionally, the standard version of the iPhone 17 offers increased storage without a price increase, starting at 256GB, which is 1,000 yuan cheaper than the 256GB version of the previous generation.
On the evening of September 12, Apple’s stock price surged, rising nearly 1.8% to $234.15 at the time of writing, with a total market value of $3.47 trillion.
Many consumers took to social media to comment: “It’s harder to get one this year compared to last year.” “The official website’s delivery schedule is already pushed to October.” “Can’t get one at all.” “Before the sale, everyone was criticizing, now everything’s sold out in seconds.” “Just like Tesla, never wins online, but offline sales never disappoint.”