It could be the launch of two new phones instead of one. It could be the excitement over the new features. It could be better marketing. For whatever reason, they met or exceeded expectations this opening weekend with over 9 million units.

Apple has just issued a press release revealing it sold 9M iPhones during the launch weekend of its iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. As is typical for the company with new hardware, it hasn’t broken out individual model sales, but other signals point to a stronger debut weekend for the higher-end iPhone 5s than for the 5c. Apple blew away its previous record for first weekend iPhone sales, which was 5 million for the iPhone 5 last year.