A little under a year ago, Apple was proudly proclaiming that pre-orders of its then-new iPhone 4S had exceeded one million devices in the space of a single day; an achievement, to be sure. Overnight, however, the company announced that it had doubled last year's figures, receiving more than two million pre-orders for the iPhone 5 in just 24 hours. For the bean counters, that's more than 83,000 pre-orders every hour. Not too shabby for a device which some media commentators have pegged as a conservative, iterative update.

Apple CEO Tim Cook may well be rubbing his hands together, but there's a downside to these stats: as Apple puts it, demand for the iPhone 5 has exceeded the initial supply, meaning, as we covered yesterday, some pre-ordered units won't be supplied to customers until October, although the company has indicated it intends to ship the majority of devices on 21 September, the iPhone 5's in-store on-sale date.

Apple's announcement comes at the same time as early reports that the first third-party Lightning connector adapters have started selling cheaply online. We've previously covered Apple's plan to corner the market with an exclusive official range of its controversial new connector accessories, but it seems cheaper, unofficial avenues will be available.