Thousands snap up first iPhones
2007-06-30 08:12
New York - Thousands of US gadget fans flocked to stores on Friday to be the first buyers of Apple's iPhone, a music-playing and web-browsing
device expected to shake up the mobile industry.
Crowds lined up at some of Apple's outlets cheered as their doors opened at 18:00 local time, while smaller groups waited outside AT&T stores.
AT&T Inc is the phone's exclusive wireless carrier for the first two years, which many early reviewers cited as the phone's biggest drawback.
"I haven't slept in a day and a half," said Grant Johnson,
41, an accountant from Brooklyn who was one of the first to
walk out of Apple's Fifth Avenue outlet clutching the prize. "I
need a nice hot shower and a bath."
Early hitches included a hiccup in AT&T's retail computer
system that delayed some East Coast sales for 45 minutes, and a
sluggish response from Apple's online store shortly after it
began offering iPhones.
The iPhone melds a phone, web browser and media player, and
costs $500 to $600, depending on memory capacity. Technology
gurus praised it as a "breakthrough" device, but questioned
whether users would be unhappy with shortcomings such as its
lack of a hardware keyboard and pokey internet link.
The light, svelte gadget is a gamble by Apple Inc co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs to build upon his company's best-selling iPod music player and expand the market for its software and media services.
"They want to extend the dominance they have in terms of
their ability to create really elegant hardware and software
integration," said Mark McGuire, analyst with research firm
Gartner. "This is the next big business unit for them."
Apple aims to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, which would
amount to a one percent share of the global market. It has not
given a sales goal for the launch, but some analysts said it
could sell up to 400 000 units in the first few days.