Apple (AAPL) sold more than 10 million of its new iPhones over the weekend. This is the biggest opening weekend for iPhones in the company’s history, which was to be expected.

But that’s basically all we know. Apple didn’t give many other details, which means we don’t know how many people opted to buy the larger iPhone 6 Plus or how much storage they bought, which is important because phones with more memory mean larger profit margins. Another unanswered question is which wireless carriers were able to use the new phones to lure customers away from their competitors.

While Apple’s opening weekends for iPhones get lots of attention, the sales number isn’t just a measure of how popular the phones are going to be. For Apple, changing a global manufacturing operation over from making the old model of iPhones to the new models takes some time. Walter Piecyk of BTIG wrote in a note last week that the opening-day numbers are best seen as a measure of Apple’s ability to ramp up manufacturing. Comparing this year’s launch to last year’s isn’t straightforward because the circumstances are different. That said, the company sold more more-expensive phones this year (no analogue to the inexpensive 5C), and it did so without launching in China (as it did last year).

We’ll learn more in the weeks and months ahead. The new iPhones will go on sale in over 20 more countries on Sept. 26 (China’s still not one of them). By the end of the year, that list will grow to 115 countries. A more straightforward comparison will come once Apple is reporting quarterly sales numbers. In the meantime, by announcing a number that was pretty much right in the center of analyst expectations, Apple is showing that nothing particularly unusual happened over the weekend.

(Bloomberg Businessweek)