Apple Inc. (AAPL) stock continued its upward mark on Monday as investors cheered the iPhone X launch, which already looks like a massive success. Oh yes, and by the way, Apple is releasing the results from its most recently completed quarter this week. Neither investors nor analysts seem to care about that, judging from the plethora of analyst reports focusing on the iPhone X with little mention of this week’s earnings report.

Image Source: Apple.com (screenshot)

iPhone X demand is “off the charts”

Apple probably has media hype to thank for some of the demand for the iPhone X, given the plethora of posts calling on fans to get up in the middle of the night to preorder the phone and even keep multiple browser tabs open. This caused Apple’s website and other websites that offered iPhone X preorders to crash in the early morning on Friday.

Apple described iPhone X demand as “off the charts,” and analysts from multiple firms quickly commented on Friday that lead times for preorders climbed quickly to five or six weeks within minutes of opening. Preorder lead times remained at five to six weeks over the weekend.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Amit Daryanani said in a note to investors on Monday that they’ve checked preorder lead times for the iPhone X in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, China, Japan and UAE and found that the five- to six-week timeframe is the same across geographies, carriers, colors and even memory size. He believes that Apple could simply trying to be conservative and that buyers might receive their phones earlier than that.

Conspiracy theory?

Looking at his comment from a conspiracy theorist view, one could question whether Apple is trying to make the iPhone X harder to get than it really is. There is no denying that some consumers just want something because it’s hard to find, and some analysts were even offering ideas about what Apple could do to convince people the $1,000 price tag is worth it. Making something seem rare certainly would help in this regard, although we probably won’t ever know the truth.