With pre-orders for the new iPhone 4S breaking previous records, consumers once again show that they will embrace new Apple products regardless of how the tech community receives them.

Apple introduced the new iPhone 4S on Oct. 4, showcasing its faster performance and use of voice recognition technology. While the tech community ? who had been expecting a whole new phone to be introduced instead of an upgrade to an existing one ? was not impressed, Apple nonetheless reported yesterday that pre-orders for iPhone 4S broke a record with 1 million orders in a single day.

?Apple seems to have a fair amount of success selling devices whether or not they meet the tech industry?s expectations,? said Noah Elkin, Austin, TX-based principal analyst at eMarketer. ?They certainly meet consumer expectations.?

?Apple customers will buy whatever Apple is selling,? he said.

New potential buyers
Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S surpassed the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by the iPhone 4, according to Apple, Cupertino, CA.

The volume of pre-orders is being driven by several factors, including existing iPhone customers who want to upgrade

?There are probably a fair number of consumers on Verizon who knew that there was going to be a new iPhone so they held off on buying one earlier,? Mr. Elkin said.

Additionally, Sprint is one of the carriers selling the iPhone 4S, marking the first time the carrier has been able to offer an iPhone to its customers.

?Certainly the expansion to a third carrier means that there is a whole other range of potential buyers that weren?t there before,? Mr. Elkin said. ?All of the Sprint customers have been anxiously any iPhone since it became available.?

The news is good for Apple which is competing in an increasingly competitive market.

According to the latest report from comScore, Apple experienced a 1.1 percent increase in its share of the mobile handset market for a total of 9.8 percent of the market to put it in fourth place for the three months ending in August. During the same period, Samsung was the top mobile handset manufacturer with a 25.3 percent market share, up 0.5 percent.

Samsung was followed by LG with a 21 percent market share and Motorola with a 14 percent market share.

The iPhone 4S will go on sale on Oct. 14.

The device comes with new features including Apple?s dual-core A5 chip for faster performance and better graphics, a new camera, 1080p HD resolution video recording and Siri, a personal assistant that uses voice-recognition technology.

The iPhone 4S is priced $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model and $399 for a 64GB model.

Consumers are ordering the new iPhone 4S regardless of the fact that it is not a 4G device and it does not have an embedded NFC chip to enable mobile payments, both of which have been named as drawbacks by the tech community.

The strong performance for the iPhone 4S mirrors similarly strong results for previous Apple products, including the original iPhone and the iPad.

Apple has followed a pattern of introducing a new phone followed by an upgrade of that phone before introducing a new phone again. The company may be waiting to bring out any significant new features until the iPhone 5.

?Apple is not ready to place certain bets yet,? Mr. Elkin said. 

?Apple tends not to be a first mover in terms of features,? he said. ?They tend to like to see how things shake out and be sure that the device will be able to support new features adequately in terms of performance and battery life.

?The big jumps have seemed to come with every other iteration.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York