Ordered an iphone6 last week. Ordered it sim free directly from Apple instead of from a network. Got the email yesterday to say it was despatched and would arrive in a week's time.
I'm in the UK, and I thought that was a very long delivery time from despatch, until I looked at the tracking to see that the order is being fulfilled directly from China. Phone has just left Dubai. And UPS is now saying it'll be here 2 days earlier than Apple originally stated.
One doesn't expect an Apple order to be shipped from China. but I'm guessing that just how they do it to expediate things for the first crazy phase. UPS is handling the entire distribution from factory to end user for direct sales.