“Apple Inc’s new iPhone went on sale in stores across the globe on Friday, prompting thousands to queue around city blocks to snap up the final gadget unveiled during Steve Jobs’ life,” Mayumi Negishi and Michelle Martin report for Reuters.
“Queues wound down the street in Sydney, Tokyo, London, Paris and Munich as fans gathered to get their hands on the iPhone 4S, ahead of later store sales in North America,” Negishi and Martin report. “‘I am a fan, a big fan. I want something to remember Steve Jobs by,’ said Haruko Shiraishi, waiting patiently with her Yorkshire terrier Miu Miu at the end of an eight block queue in Tokyo’s smart Ginza shopping district.”
“The new model looks similar to the previous iPhone 4 but has an upgraded camera, faster processor and highly regarded voice-activated software, which allows users to ask questions,” Negishi and Martin report. “The phone — introduced just a day before Jobs died — was initially dubbed a disappointment because it fell short of being a revolution in design, but glowing reviews centred around its “Siri” voice-activated software have helped it set a record pace in initial, online sales orders.”
Negishi and Martin report, “On Regent Street in central London, the queue wound down a sidestreet and into a park, where Starbucks had a mobile stand to serve coffee. Of the 40 people to whom Reuters spoke in London, 13 were switching from other phones. ‘This is rubbish,’ one buyer at a north London store said, holding his Blackberry after owner Research in Motion struggled for days to fix an international outage of its Blackberry email and messaging services.”
Read more in the full article here.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that Apple will prosper without Steve Jobs, who still wonders if the dream of its founder is alive in our time, who still questions the power of Apple’s products, today is your answer.”
I think the institutional and hedge fund managers that control Apple stock will continue to question Apple’s long-term growth as they have been doing all along. It’s their mantra. We’ll see how the stock reacts upon earnings and see whether it pops like Google’s stock does. YOY earnings will be far superior to Google’s.
Just heard Jon Fortt and CNBC’s host say that Apple had “saturated” the market, with smartphones, implying that such a large company may not continue to grow as much.
Not that people shouldn’t buy one (I have) but it seems a bit stupid to buy an iPhone so you can remember Steve Jobs. It’s hardly any more or less specific to him than any other product that they make, or indeed are likely to release in the next few years – especially as the changes are internal and software based.
I’m pretty sure Steve wanted people to buy Apple products because they’re great, not because they like him.
Yeah! iPhone 4S… “S” stands for “speed, superior, Siri and Suck it, Android.”
33% buyers are switching from other brands. Bloodbath.
Love the quote in the story. RIM = Rubbish IMmobilized.
About 40 lined up at local Sprint store, as early as 2:00am. Sprint store only got 10 phones in! 5 white, 5 black, and only 16gig. Girl first online wanted a 64. She waited 6+ hours and walked away with nothing. Really Sprint 10? Best Buy was even worse. They never received ANY Sprint iPhones? Really? At least we got one today.
No one who waits in line and leaves empty handed can complain. You wait in line to be part of the event and see if you get lucky. If you actually want a new iPhone as soon as possible, you lie on the couch and order it online the first day. My white 16 gb and black 16 gb will be on the front porch today. I will have to walk 20 feet to get them…
When you are first on line you expect to get something! And can we have more than 10 phones available? Really?
I was out of town on business when the preorders were sold out, so this morning my son, who stood to inherit my 32 GB iPhone 4, got in line at the local ATT at 7 am. I joined him at 7:45 and bought a 64 GB black 4S with the AppleCare+ tacked on.
(Note to Siri, go to market and get 20lb bag of dried beans and 10lb sack of cornmeal to survive on for next 14 daze….)
Note to siri – LOL 🙂
BTW – has anyone tried:
“Open the pod bay door Siri!” ??
2:00am this morning there were about 30 people lined up outside the Burlingame Apple store and none outside the AT&T store. I went to the ATT store at 6:15am and was about 16th in line. I had a complicated order that had to be done at the AT&T store. I got a 32GB iP4S. As far as I could tell everyone in line got what they wanted. I went back at 4:00PM with a question and people were still getting phones. I can only guess that that store must have received a few hundred phones.
I heard that at the San Francisco Apple store the line snaked around to Union Square.