Apple: We are on pace to beat last year's iPhone first-weekend record

CNBC ^ | CNB staff

[Swordmaker]

Apple on Monday said it's on pace to beat last year's iPhone first-weekend record, and the stock opened higher on the news.

"Customer response to iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus has been extremely positive and preorders this weekend were very strong around the world," the company said in a statement. "We are on pace to beat last year's 10 million unit first-weekend record when the new iPhones go on sale Sept. 25."

According to an iPhone Inventory blog which tracks the back-order status of the various iPhone models, the wait time for the big-screen iPhone 6S Plus in China is running at three to four weeks, and two to three weeks for the 6S, Re/code reported Saturday.

"As many customers noticed, the online demand for iPhone 6S Plus has been exceptionally strong and exceeded our own forecasts for the preorder period," the company also wrote. "We are working to catch up as quickly as we can, and we will have iPhone 6S Plus as well as iPhone 6S units available at Apple retail stores when they open next Friday."

The company's release this year differs somewhat from 2014, when it announced how many units it sold in the first 24 hours of preorders.

Tech analyst Walter Piecyk at BTIG said Monday it's not clear how to compare initial preorders to 2014.

"Last year, it started on a Thursday night at midnight. This year, because of a late Labor Day, is was Friday night," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in an interview. "So we don't know what the comp is, whether they have to wait through the end of Monday to find out exactly what the actual number is going to be."

From a feature standpoint, Piecyk said the new Force Touch incorporated in the iPhone might not be enough on its own for users to upgrade: "But from a functionality [standpoint], it's actually great."

The force-sensitive technology 3D Touch allows what Apple calls "peek and pop," a way for users to preview content with a light touch or open it with a heavier touch.

"It is really going to change the way people use the iPhone," Piecyk said. "It's going you save you time, and that's what people really care about."

Meanwhile, FBR Capital Markets senior analyst Daniel Ives said the preorders suggested a strong trajectory for the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus.

He said he was encouraged by the response in China, where Apple's website showed particularly long wait times for the phones. "It shows that they are off to a white-hot start, with China really being front and center as a main driver of initial demand."

The company's stock has sunk in recent weeks on concerns about how it will fare amid the downturn in the Chinese economy. "Hopefully this can start to turn the negative tide that's been overhanging the stock," Ives said.

During the market turmoil on China concerns and Apple's growth prospects there, CEO Tim Cook sent an email to CNBC's Jim Cramer on Aug. 24, saying, "We have continued to experience strong growth for our business in China through July and August."

"As you know, we don't give midquarter updates and we rarely comment on moves in Apple stock," Cook also wrote at the time. "But I know ... [the] question is on the minds of many investors."

Early indications the new iPhones are also selling well in China bodes well, Piecyk said Monday.

"[But] Cook put his reputation on the line by sending Cramer the email saying that China's fine. If the numbers don't deliver through that's his reputation that's on the line," he contended.

Amit Daryanani, equity analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said Monday his firm believes sales of 12 million units in the first weekend are a "reasonable expectation."

He noted that 60 percent of incremental revenue came from China in the most recent financial reporting period, so Apple likely anticipated strong demand and positioned a lot of inventory for the market.

"The fact that you're sitting at two to four week lead times already in China and across the world is probably a sign that demand is a lot stronger than people were expecting out of it right now," he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

Daryanani said he trusts the data from the widely cited iPhone inventory blog, which uses screen shots of wait times displayed on Apple's website in order to calculate back orders. That methodology has been a reliable proxy of inventory lag and demand in the past, he said.

The real question, he said, is whether the data from China reflect firm purchase orders—meaning customers have submitted their financial information—or merely soft commitments to buy the 6S and 6S Plus when they become available.

"That's a little unclear candidly, and that's probably one thing that everyone needs to figure out," Daryanani said. "But barring that, I think the numbers sound fairly positive for them."

[PJBankard]

You really don't know what your talking about. 256 bit AES standard encryption IS impervious

Again, nothing is impervious, especially not something designed and thought out by man. Although no one at this time has successfully broken an AES 256-bit encryption, this doesn't mean that it can't be done.

The Titanic was thought to be unsinkable, and we all know how that ended.

It may take time and additional advances in technology, but as I said before, anything created by man can be overcome or destroyed by man.

[Swordmaker]

The Titanic was thought to be unsinkable, and we all know how that ended.

No, you might have thought it unsinkable, but I assure you that Thomas Andrews, the designer of the Titanic and her sister ships did not. He specified enough lifeboats for every passenger on the Titanic, only to have that specification over ridden by a committee who went with the government regulation number instead. The advertising agency was the one who claimed what you claimed.

Again, you don't know what you are talking about. This is mathematics we are talking about. . . I used as measuring stick a super-computer capable of trying three trillion possible keys a year on our iPhone with 256 bit AES encryption. Let's say you make a huge break through in computer tech and you improve your super computer by new technology and make it a TRILLION times faster that what we are capable of calculating today. How much time do you think we could cut down on that 5.62 x 10¹⁹⁵ years? Remember the computer is a trillion times faster than the one we were using. Guess what. We could try all those possible keys in only 5.62 X 10¹⁸³ years. WOW, PJ, that's quite a time savings. You can take the weekend off before you start.

Let's make it a trillion trillion times faster yet. . . now it will only take 5.62 X 10¹⁵⁹ years. . . now you can take a week off. . .

Do you even KNOW what 256 AES encryption standard is? Our financial institutions in this country and much of our government agencies use 128 bit AES encryption as good enough for their use. 256 bit is essentially four times as effective as that level.

The key is that you have to keep it secure enough for long enough so that it is not worth it to whoever wants to get at your data. . . and they lose interest.

[PJBankard]

You are an arrogant @ss. Yes I'm fully aware what AES is. It is based on the Rijndael cipher. While algebraically it is simple, cryptographically it is not. It uses both substitution and permutation when encrypting.

Yes, a brute force attack would take a really long time. However, with the ever growing advances in technology and mathematical algorithms, I'm not naive to the possibility that someone could develop a method of cryptographically breaking AES.

So again I point back to my original point: Anything created by man, can be overcome/destroyed by man.

There is no such this as an unstoppable force or and immovable object. Thus nothing is impervious.

[ReignOfError]

Obviously, the previous phone had a problem.

So any company that improves its products with each iteration is admitting that all of its previous products are defective? Every Samsung phone and tablet, Every Surface tablet, every pre-2016 car, every pre-2016 television, every pre-2015 home appliance, was a scam run on the buyer?

[Moonman62]

Not any company, A P P L E. They are the only company to have their perfect products delivered from the mountain by Moses.

[Triple]

Isn’t is strange that when companies open up new markets their sales increase?

I assume you are looking for a metric like same store sales, or maybe market share by territory.

Fine metrics, but don’t scoff at total sales and overall market share, especially when the firm is opening new stores all over and has just broken into a big market.

Remember ratios don’t fill for bank account, but revenues do.

[dennisw]

Xiaomi is what keeps the Cupertino gangstas tossing and turning each night. Xiaomi will first steal their China businesses. Then comes the rest of Asia. Apple has saturated the North American and European markets. Their next move is China but Xiaomi is killing them in China.

My own guess is that Xiaomi gets an inside track on all Apple technology via their Foxcom spies, and reverse engineers what they need. China steals from every Western company that is stupid enough to manufacture in China. The AppleBots run a tight ship so it took longer in this case.

[Swordmaker]

You are an arrogant @ss. Yes I'm fully aware what AES is. It is based on the Rijndael cipher. While algebraically it is simple, cryptographically it is not. It uses both substitution and permutation when encrypting.

The arrogant @ss here is you, PJ. I see you did some Googling to bring you sort of up to speed on state of the art AES encryption but apparently you learned nothing. . . to claim breaking it just "would take a really long time," and that someone could come up with a technological and mathematical algorithm that would possibly break it, shows you still don't grasp the issues at all. Any such attempt requires a system of try and compare. Mathematics is a tool, NOT magic. . . it cannot just magically decrypt something by waving an algorithm at it. It will ALWAYS take time. It is quite obvious you do not even have even the beginning of a grasp on what "a very long time" is.

If you recall when I postulated that they came up with a super-computer that was a TRILLION TRILLION times faster than the one I had already postulated they might come up with that was a TRILLION time faster than what we have today that could try 3,000,000,000,000 possible keys per year and compare the to see if they found something intelligible in your data. That hypothetical computer only shortened the time to go through every possible key to 5.62 X 10¹⁵⁹ years to try every possible key. PJ, there are estimated to be only 4 X 10⁸¹ ATOMS in the observable Universe!

In other words, JB, If your technologically faster supercomputer—which is now a trillion, trillion, trillion times faster than the best supercomputer we have at our disposal today—were put to the sole task of your breaking into these encrypted files, and if you were to count ONE ATOM per year in the Universe to keep track, you'd RUN OUT OF ATOMS a little over half way through the task. . . except you would not.

Why? Simple. The estimated half life of protons, neutrons, etc., is only 10³⁶ years. The Universe would not HAVE any atoms left for you to use to keep count of years! They'd have evaporated back to a primordial soup.

As I pointed out earlier, this is the LAW of very large numbers, and there is no escaping it, regardless of speed and algorithms.

If that is arrogance, so be it. I have facts backing my position. YOU merely have your blind faith in a false statement.

So again I point back to my original point: Anything created by man, can be overcome/destroyed by man.

What you fail to understand is that canard is completely untrue. . . except for the "destroyed" portion. The fact is that an AES encrypted file can be destroyed, but the any person trying to get usable data from such AES protected data will destroy it before anything getting any usable data from it unless they have the key. It's inevitable. It will either be destroyed by frustration, or ennui, being put away in storage and forgotten until the data randomizes through age and dis-interest.

I can think of several things created by man that cannot be "overcome". . . in the way that you cannot un-bake a cake. I can create a cypher that would be unbreakable right now. Any one can do it by using a book that is already out in the public. . . but you and your correspondent have a set of rules based on the date the code is sent about which algorithm you use to find the correct page, word, letter count, backwards, forwards, etc. to use to find the substituted letter for a series of numbers that are transmitted. . . and only the two of you know WHICH BOOK the code is based on. Since no two messages ever duplicate a pattern, and no letter in a message is ever repeated, nor is there ever a pattern for a word, space, number, etc. It is, for all purposes, ever changing, unbreakable. And, with a modern computer, easily usable.

Your assumptions a blithely made but truly naive. Do you know what the Kryptos sculpture is? It a sculpture outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, which was created by an artist, Jim Sanborn, who worked with Ed Scheidt, Chairman of the CIA Cryptographic Center.

Kryptos by Jim Sanborn, sculpture at CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Kryptos, when finished contained four sets of encrypted quotations and challenged the world's finest cryptologists to decipher them. Three have been solved, but the fourth remains unsolved after 25 years of trying by the best minds the CIA and NSA as well as the rest of the world can bring to bear working on it.

The first three cyphers of Kryptos were breakable by simple dictionary attacks as they had key words such as "palimpsest" and "Abscissa" and the third had clues in the first two.

You call me an "arrogant @ss," but you are the one convinced of your position without evidence. I have been the one who provided evidence, which you dismiss with faith in "pie-in-the-sky" technological and algorithm advancements that will magically validate your evidenceless claims.

You are afraid of my facts simply because you don't like that I can shoot down your faith that mankind can somehow break what mankind creates. As I said, it just is not true.

Ask yourself if we will ever get get a handle on Africanized "killer" Bees? How about controlling or eradicating the rabbits in Australia? What about eliminating the common Starlings from North America? Can we restore the Dodo bird to it's habitat? You see there are some man made things that are just NOT reversible or solvable. . . yet you keep falling back to a provably false premise, yet you claim I am the arrogant one? You are arrogant because you don't want to let anyone point out facts and evidence that get in the way of your mere belief and you don't want anyone to disagree with your faith in the omnipotence of man.

[Swordmaker]

Not any company, A P P L E. They are the only company to have their perfect products delivered from the mountain by Moses.

Where has Apple ever claimed such a thing, Moonman? YOU might claim that, but Apple has not. You are the one erecting strawman scarecrow FUD arguments for you to shootdown and you make yourself a fool to raise them.

Please list the defective things being fixed in the iPhone 6s that were "broken" or "deficient" in the iPhone 6 that were not already addressed for free by Apple in a software update or by warranty. . . and show that iPhone 6s is merely a fixit update as YOU are the only one claiming.

And no, a problem claimed by only NINE or THREE complaints out of 150 million sold is NOT a systemic design flaw or problem that needs a design fix so don't even bother listing them.

[Swordmaker]

Xiaomi is what keeps the Cupertino gangstas tossing and turning each night. Xiaomi will first steal their China businesses. Then comes the rest of Asia. Apple has saturated the North American and European markets. Their next move is China but Xiaomi is killing them in China.

More lies from our resident liar. Apple is not worried about Xiaomi at all, Dennis. Xiaomi's profits in all of 2014 totaled $56 million. Whoopee! Xiaomi made less than $1 from every phone they sold in 2014!

Xiaomi sells phones in the bargain basement, an area where Apple has never competed and has no interest in competing.

Apple sold out of every iPhone 6s and 6s Plus allocated to for pre-sales in China in less than 12 hours! Apple is not worried. Apple's sales even increased in the months of August and September where Xiaomi released its new models, despite consumers waiting for the new Apple iPhones. Apple's China Sales in that month show the best historical results Year-over-year for the same two months by far.

Again, Dennis, you have to get better lies if you are going to up your game in these threads. You are too easy to shoot down. You lies have to be based at least somewhat in reality, not these false claims not based in any kind of reality except your delusions. Are you still claiming you own stock in Xiaomi when it is NOT traded, being family owned by members of CEO Lei Jun's family with Lei Jun holding 77.8%, Liwan Jiang holds 10.12% share in the company, while Liu has 2.01% and 10.07% is held by other family members. I don't see DennisW on that list unless you are married into that family in wester China. Are you? Xiaomi's CEO says they are not planning an IPO for at least five years. So, you got hoist on your own lie petard for that claim. . .

[Moonman62]

[Swordmaker]

You are the troll in this thread. . . spreading mis-truths. Try to answer the challenges which you cannot. You are the one attacking with ad hominems. What are you doing here? We don’t have to “lighten up.”

[PJBankard]

Yes I am aware of the sculpture. Are you aware that there is a mistake admitted by the sculptor on one of the solved pages? I’m sure you will say you were.

Yes, I can admit that I don’t know everything and do check information; however, I can push the same back to you as I’m sure you didn’t know the exact mathematical numbers for a brute force attack against AES 256 without checking.

Sorry, I didn’t define my use of “a really long time” to the exact second of time, your worship. Please commune to the Apple gods that I apologize for doubting their unfathomable ability to create perfect mobile devices and applications for the multitudes, and that I am truly jealous of their ability. I also apologize for criticizing your outlandish statements of unstoppable forces and immovable objects. /s

Once again, I will state that nothing is impossible, uncrack-able, impervious.

[Moonman62]

[Swordmaker]

Moonman, you asshats have been using Apple Threads and Apple users as the butts of your lying unfunny bigoted jokes for THIRTY YEARS and we are DAMNED TIRED OF IT. We don’t have to take your jokes. . . YOU try bing the butt of jokes for that amount of time and see how YOU like it. . .

[Moonman62]

[Swordmaker]

Yes I am aware of the sculpture. Are you aware that there is a mistake admitted by the sculptor on one of the solved pages? I’m sure you will say you were.

You see how arrogant you are that you insultingly impute that I am a liar. . . assuming that I will claim knowledge I don't know just to look erudite and aware of things I already know. But I brought up Kryptos, not you, PJ, because I am very familiar with it and DO know about it and the errors and the history of it. Your insulting comment is entirely uncalled for. So, yes, I am aware of the error and also some deliberate misspellings to throw off solvers.

And continuing with your further denigrating comments, no, I did not have to "look up the numbers on AES, because it was simpler for me to CALCULATE the numbers of the AES 256 based on the information cited by Apple to encrypt user data using a recommended 16 character passcode entangled with the 128 bit UUID when Apple started using it a couple of years ago. I read Apple's Security PDF that described what they were doing and how they were doing it. I also read the new PDF on the Secure Enclave incorporated in the A8 processor and now in the A9 and A9X processors. I further read how the one-way HASHes are calculated based on the passcodes and how THOSE HASHes are the actual thing entangled with the UUID and then RE-HASHED to actually construct the 256 bit AES key which has no connection with any human input.

It's not hard calculate the time maximum time required try every key when one understands the math involved. . . which I do. AES is, after all, a standard that has been around for FOURTEEN YEARS and available for anyone to use. . . they've just increased in the number of bits the keys have been using.

As I said our financial institutions are still using 128 bit encryption for the most part and even most government agencies. Some cryptographers are recommending going to 512 bit, but that is probably extreme overkill considering the size of the numbers involved the computers have to crunch to encrypt and decrypt to use it now. I do keep a copy of my work in my notepad, because I run into people like you quite frequently on the Internet who are convinced that someday someone will be able to easily crack AES standard encryption by inventing MAGIC algorithms or a faster computer. One claimed his gaming rig could whip it out in a couple of weeks!

Microsoft has just announced a new method of encryption called Elliptical Curve Cryptography that generates the keys using a three factor means with a one of them being public. The reason for a new approach is that each of the factors will be a small number, allowing the processors to quickly calculate both the encryption and decryption while still making it VERY secure. They've made the code open source so anyone can use it.

And yet again, you show your abysmal ignorance of what you are talking about by repeating your blithe dismissal of what you really do not know anything about. You show you are not qualified to hold an opinion on the subject by your ex cathedra pronouncements. The ability to Google something doesn't make you knowledgeable. Some people are simply NOT qualified to hold the opinions they spout off on. . . and you demonstrate it with your claim of "nothing is impossible, uncrack-able, impervious."

I don't know everything, but I do know what I have investigated and studied. I know when I see someone posting twaddle on something they know nothing about who keeps posting the same thing over and over again based on that NOTHING with no evidence. . . and who doubles down when presented with overwhelming provable evidence that he is wrong. And then he insults the person who presents the evidence because he can't rebut that evidence except with anecdotes about antique ships and keep repeating his falsifiable canards. That's you, PJ.

But ignorance is curable, PJ. . . I work at curing mine every day! But you can only do it if you make the effort of putting off the blinders of your assumption that everything is possible and nothing is impossible. AND, PJ, that some people DO know more than you about technical matters. . . and math. . . and cryptography, and try to learn from them. I've been trying to educate you in an area you are stubbornly refusing to open your mind about.

Again: What ARE your plans for eliminating those Killer Bees, Starlings, and the rabbits in Australia? While you are at solving those, you can go on to tackle Kudzu, Water Hyacinth, Chinese Thistle in the west, and the Japanese Beetle in California. Once you address those man made issues, then PLEASE get back to me about nothing being impossible.

[PJBankard]

Where to begin?

You’re a hypocrite. You call me arrogant and say that I insult you but you assumed first that I had to Google what AES was. And you assume that I have no knowledge on the subject. I never state that I am a subject matter expert, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any knowledge of the subject. Futhermore, as you didn’t write any of those articles you quoted, you must have done research in some manner. Look at yourself before you criticize others.

Secondly, I made a simple straight forward statement. Anything created by man can be destroyed/overcome by man. Your choice to assimilate this to problems caused by man is your own error. Man did not create killer bees, Kudzu, or any of the other things in your list. Man caused an errant situation. On the other hand, AES was created by man. It does not exist without man. As man has built it, man will find a way to overcome it. The Kryptos sculpture proves my point. While it has taken a long time to crack 3 of the 4 pages, the encryption was broken for the first 3 pages. You couldn’t call the Kryptos encryption impervious (Prior to it being cracked). Which is the point I was making. My reference to what you call “MAGIC” algorithms was simply a possible means of breaking the encryption.

Yes, I’m aware that most financial instituions still use 128 bit encryption. I also have read the article about Microsoft’s ECC.

[Swordmaker]

I think you make things up as you go along, PJ. I bring up a point, and suddenly, you spout things you've obviously from Googling the subject and getting what is obviously a superficial understanding.

As for what you call non-manmade problems, I very carefully selected what I listed to include things that were exactly man made problems. Mankind actually BRED the Killer bees by crossing African honey bees with American honey bees in hopes of creating a better producing honey bee but found the result was far worse than either the African Bee or the American Native bee, and not limited by the temperatures they thought. Sorry, you are just wrong on that. Mankind moved animals from their natural habitats to others, thereby creating problems that did not exist because they thought they were solving a specific solution to a problem. The Starlings were imported into this country in the late 1800s by an organization that wanted to bring European flora and fauna to the US and that every European bird mentioned by Shakespeare should be imported into the United States and released. DUMB move. Starlings are displacing many native species of songbirds. Kudzu and Water Hyacinth were introduced BY MAN, into areas where they were going to be "ornamental" plants only, were promised to be easily controllable according to the "experts" who introduced them. They are both now severe problem pest plants that clog waterways and make navigation almost impossible in what used to be navigable waterways. The rabbits in Australia came about because a new colonist missed hunting wild rabbits and decided to flaunt the law and released 24 rabbits into the wild so that he could hunt wild rabbits. The rabbits, now in the billions, ravage the local farms and native ecology because they have no natural predators. That is men with technology creating a problem that is now impossible to solve.

No, PJ, obviously I did not write those Wikipedia articles, but I have studied math, technology, and crytography since I was in high school and was sending cryptograms back and forth to a classmate challenging him to decipher them. So you are the hypocrite, coming late to this, and claiming any kind of knowledge but challenging people like me who DO know what they are talking about and THEN ARGUING about it when we correct your claims, especially still clinging to your opinion that "everything" can be cracked.

I even showed you one that is uncrackable. Unless one of the two parties involved tells reveals the key pattern and the book being used, NO ONE CAN CRACK IT. It is literally impossible. But if one of the users gives up the key, that is not cracking, that's just opening the door and letting them in. Cryptographers agree that that kind of shared cypher cannot be cracked.

The fact is, PJ, the Kryptos encryption was cracked just 12-18 months after it was erected in 1990, just not publicized, by teams at the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI because the first three WERE just simple dictionary cyphers. It took a freedom of information lawsuit to extract those facts from those agencies. . . and it may actually be that the fourth cypher has been cracked but just not publicized.

The artist who created it has given out some clues intended to help, giving some letter combinations and the words they actually resolve to, including two sets, one of six resolving to "BERLIN" and a second of five to "CLOCK", which he says if they can figure out which famous clock in Berlin it refers to, would give them a clue to deciphering the rest.

The fourth cypher is not just a simple dictionary key. We know that because if the artist is being honest, the last two letters substitutions for the word "BERLIN" have exactly the same letters in the cypher, and if were just a plain substitution, that could not happen. "I" and "N" would be represented by the same character, so it has to be an evolving cypher, which changes for each character.

My point is that you assume too much and not enough. . .

But, PJ, what I really want to know is why do you denigrate the best protection against violation of your privacy merely because you think that SOMEDAY, someone might be able to decrypt it—especially when someday could be trillions of years away—when it is the safest today? It is so secure the GOVERNMENT is trying desperately to find a way around it.

Do you really want to rely on second best or hope that best intentions of police with search warrants can be trusted to exercise discretion on your physically stored data that you don't control?

Frankly, you make no sense when you do that. . . and then you attack people who try to tell you why it is safe and demonstrate why. You reek fear for some reason and grasp at straws calling that person names and throwing insults around. I have only claimed you were ignorant about this field. . . which as far as I can see is true. I have not insulted your intelligence or honesty. You've done the last with me.

[ReignOfError]

Xiaomi is what keeps the Cupertino gangstas tossing and turning each night.Xiaomi will first steal their China businesses. Then comes the rest of Asia.

Bold predictions. How's your track record with Asia predictions?

You obviously don’t know how big Manny Pacquiao is across Asia. Billions of Asians are going buy HP’s TouchPad due to him. Apple will lose 98% of their Asian sales. HP is in very very close cooperation with the Taiwanese geniuses producing a superior product. They have torn part hundreds of iPads and know what makes them tick. They know how to make it all work better and the result is the HP TouchPad

The HP TouchPad is something like the iPad v. 6.0

--dennisw, 7/15/2011