• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 17, 2012

Since its debut, tech analysts have chided Apple’s latest iPhone for being more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Likely to quiet such criticism, Apple said Monday that iPhone 5 pre-orders topped two million in the first 24 hours -- more than double the record set by the iPhone 4S, last year.

“The iPhone 5 might only be an evolutionary rather than revolutionary new smartphone, but that apparently has had no effect on the short-term consumer interest,” writes BetaNews.

“We believe that consumer sentiment around the iPhone 5 is significantly better than it was for iPhone 4S despite the lack of excitement by the tech media,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a research note, cited by ZDNet.

Moreover, “The announcements underscore that Apple’s latest iPhone is selling big, and dampens any rumors that Apple had been seeing supply constraints heading into the launch,” according to The Washington Post.

“Some skeptics had suggested that the reason Apple experienced iPhone 5 stock-outs an hour after pre-orders started was that it had stockpiled smaller supplies of the device than previous models,” notes Fortune. “Apple's … announcements would seem to discredit that theory.”

Still, sales of the iPhone 5 still have a long way to go before reaching Apple’s historical benchmark for iPhone success.

As Business Insider reminds us, Apple marketing boss Phil Shiller recently revealed an internal measuring stick the company uses: "Each new generation sold approximately equal to all previous generations combined."

Citing one analyst’s figures, BI adds: “If the iPhone 5 is going to reach that milestone, Apple will have to sell 263 million of them.”