Lines at Apple Stores on iPhone 5’s First Day

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/technology/lines-at-apple-stores-on-iphone-5s-first-day.html

Version 0 of 1.

In a now familiar global ritual, Apple fans lined up at shops from Sydney to Paris to San Francisco on Friday to pick up the tech juggernaut’s latest iPhone.

In London, some shoppers had camped out for a week in a line that snaked around the block. In Hong Kong, the first customers were greeted by staff members cheering, clapping, chanting "iPhone 5! iPhone 5!" and high-fiving them as they were escorted one by one through the front door.

The smartphone was on sale in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Britain, France and Germany, as well as the United States and Canada, and was to be introduced in 22 more countries in a week. The iPhone 5 is thinner, lighter, has a taller screen, faster processor, updated software and can work on faster “fourth generation” mobile networks.

The handset has become a hot seller despite initial lukewarm reviews and new map software that is error-prone. Apple received two million orders in the first 24 hours of announcing its release date, more than twice the number for the iPhone 4S in the same period when that phone was introduced a year ago.

In a sign of the intense demand, police in Osaka, Japan, were investigating the theft of nearly 200 iPhones 5s, including 116 from one shop alone, Kyodo News reported. In London, police sought help finding a man wanted in connection with the theft of 252 iPhone 5s from a shop in Wimbledon early Friday.

Analysts have estimated Apple will ship as many as 10 million of the new iPhones by the end of September. Its stock rose in morning trading in New York to a new intraday high.

In Paris, the phone unveiling was accompanied by a workers’ protest — a couple of dozen former and current Apple employees demonstrated peacefully to demand better work benefits. Some decried what they called Apple’s transformation from an offbeat company into a multinational powerhouse.

But the protesters were far outnumbered by lines of hopeful buyers on the sidewalk outside the store near the city’s gilded opera house.

Not everyone lining up at the various Apple stores was an enthusiast, though. In Hong Kong, a university student, Kevin Wong, waiting to buy a black 16-gigabyte model for 5,588 Hong Kong dollars ($720), said he was getting one "for the cash." He planned to immediately resell it to one of the numerous gray market retailers catering to mainland Chinese buyers. China is one of Apple’s fastest-growing markets but a release date for the iPhone 5 there has not yet been set.

Mr. Wong was required to give his local identity card number when he signed up for his iPhone on Apple’s Web site. The requirement prevents purchases by tourists including mainland Chinese, who have a reputation for scooping up high-end goods on trips to Hong Kong because there is no sales tax and because of the strength of China’s currency. Even so, the mainlanders will probably buy it from the resellers “at a higher price — a way higher price,” said Mr. Wong, who hoped to make a profit of 1,000 Hong Kong dollars ($129).