Sep 22, 2014 09:57 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Everything about Apple's new iPhones is big: the screens, the hype and now the sales, as the company has announced more than 10 million units sold in its first weekend.

According to USA Today, Apple did not say how many of the 10 million sales were of the 5.5-inch "phlablet" iPhone 6 Plus. The 10 million mark easily surpasses the record set last year with the iPhone 5S and 5C.

Despite being the smaller of the two, the standard iPhone 6 is 4.7 inches from corner to corner, making it 0.7 inches larger than the iPhones 5/, 5S and 5C. Whereas last year was the first time Apple released two handsets at once, this was the first time the company did so with two devices in different sizes.

"Sales for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus exceeded our expectations for the launch weekend, and we couldn't be happier," Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said in a press release. "We would like to thank all of our customers for making this our best launch ever, shattering all previous sell-through records by a large margin. While our team managed the manufacturing ramp better than ever before, we could have sold many more iPhones with greater supply and we are working hard to fill orders as quickly as possible."

Perhaps more astonishing than the 10 million unit sales mark was that the figure did not include China, one of the world's largest markets for smartphones. The Chinese government did not approve the new iPhones, putting a delay on their official launch, the New York Times noted.

Apple's sales projections also had a certain element of uncertainty due to the delay in China, with some analysts predicting as high as 15 million units and other pessimistic the new devices would even broach last year's mark, Bloomberg News reported. The iPhone 6 and Plus launched Friday, Sept. 19 in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the U.K.

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