Apple began reserving some iPhone 6 customer spots two hours into its pre-order day when it was unable to connect to its U.S. carrier partners. This allowed affected orders to go through instead of hanging during the ordering process. Our own Dave Hamilton reported this when ordering an iPhone 6 Plus at 1:47 AM PDT (4:47 AM EDT) on September 12th.
Your iPhone Order
Apple has apparently experienced heavy demand from customers for iPhone 6 preorders, as the Apple Store remains offline more than two hours after preorders began. Those customers who have successfully ordered iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models did so through Apple's iPhone and iPad Apple Store apps.
That heavy demand could be due, in part, to carrier inability to keep up with demand, as many customers reported on Twitter that their orders had hung during the confirmation process. Apple used a similar technique for dealing with this problem at least as early as 2011.