(Image source: Businessweek )

BY EVAN THOMAS

ANCHOR CANDICE AVILES

The iPhone 5 flew off shelves about as expected Friday morning. Apple’s latest handset is selling like, well, iPhones.

Preorder supplies are already bottomed out. CNET reports just after 1a.m. Pacific Time, anyone trying to buy an iPhone from Apple’s online store met with a 2-week shipping estimate, rather than delivery confirmation.

For comparison, the iPhone 4S sold out of its preorder stockpile in about 22 hours. A writer at TechCrunch doesn’t get the sudden ravenous demand . Sure, Apple’s latest is a faster, shinier, all-around better phone than previous generations, but…

“I haven’t yet seen the kind of mind-melting innovation and improvement that would justify pre-orders 20 times faster than the 4 and 4S.”

Tough break for early adopters, but great news for Apple. The Wall Street Journal cites analysts with J.P. Morgan, who expect Apple will sell about eight million iPhones between now and the end of the year.

If that sales rate keeps up, it translates to an annualized $12.8 billion shot in the arm for the U.S. economy. One product by one company could boost U.S. GDP by a third of a percent.

But it’s not all good news, at least not at first. Stifel Nicolaus analysts tell CNBC this is going to hit carriers hard . Not the fresh data load, but the subsidy costs, which could affect bottom lines for the quarter.

“We estimate it could be as much as $10 billion in subsidies just from Verizon and AT&T between now and the end of the year. So clearly, I think earnings estimates need to be trimmed a little bit.”

One company is trending the other way, though — Apple’s stock jumped on the orders, briefly hitting a new record high of $696.82 during trading on Friday.