Apple Inc. said customers placed more than 2 million pre-orders for the iPhone 5 on the first day it was available, doubling previous results and exceeding initial supply of the smartphone.

The customer response to iPhone 5 has been phenomenal,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of world-wide marketing, in a press release Monday.

The Cupertino, California company said that while the majority of pre-orders will be delivered to customers on Friday—when the phone becomes available in stores—many are scheduled to be delivered in October.

“Clearly, the iPhone 5 is off to a very strong start,” Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White said, adding the figure “handily beat” the firm’s estimate of between 1.3 million and 1.5 million preorders.

The initial reception surpassed sales of the device’s predecessor, the iPhone 4S, which received more than 1 million preorders during its first day of requests Oct. 7, and easily tops the 600,000 handsets preordered after the debut of the iPhone 4.

Apple executives have said that each new iPhone has outsold all of its predecessors combined as the smartphone reaches new markets and expands within existing ones.

Earlier Monday, AT&T Inc. said iPhone sales set a record over the weekend, although the wireless carrier didn’t disclose any specific numbers. An AT&T spokesman declined to comment beyond the release.