To The Moon

Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) new iPhone 14 became available for pre-order on Friday and investment firm Wedbush Securities said the demand for the new smartphone looks "robust" and is tracking ahead of expectations.

Analyst Dan Ives, whohas an outperform rating and a $220 price target on Apple (AAPL), noted that the delivery times for many Pro models have now been pushed out to mid-October, with most pre-orders now seeing delivery times between three and four weeks out.

"So far demand and orders for iPhone 14 are tracking slightly ahead of iPhone 13 and are tracking ahead of our expectations out of the gates," Ives wrote in a note to clients, adding that there is a "very heavy" mix towards the iPhone 14 and iPhone Pro Max, which would benefit Apple's (AAPL) average selling price.

"We expect this heavy Pro/Pro Max mix to continue with China also a major sway factor as more consumers in this key region head to the Pro model," Ives added.

Apple (AAPL) shares rose nearly 2% to $160.48 in early trading on Monday.

Last week, Apple (AAPL)unveiledits iPhone 14 product line, along with new versions of the Apple Watch and AirPods Pro.

Ives added that Apple's (AAPL) initial order for 90M iPhone 14 units has "stayed firm" despite the weakening global economy and the company will likely sell at least 220M iPhone units in fiscal 2023, as almost 25% of the 1B iPhone users across the world have not upgraded in 3.5 years and demand in China for the high-end devices continues to remain strong.

Apple (AAPL) was recently warned by some Republican lawmakers that it will face additional scrutiny from Congress if thetech giant obtains memory chips from Yangtze Memory Technologies for the iPhone.