Apple fans camp out to get new iPhone 4S
Apple fans camped out overnight and queued up for hours to snag the iPhone 4S, which went on sale in brick-and-mortar stores slightly more than a week after the death of company co-founder Steve Jobs.
The latest iPhone model, which rolled out in seven countries, is poised to outstrip last year’s launch of the iPhone 4, which sold more than 1.7 million handsets in its first weekend.
On Friday morning, more than 200 people waited outside the Apple store at the Grove shopping center in L.A.’s Fairfax district as employees doled out coffee, bottles of water and umbrellas to shield against the sun.
“My friends and I were so excited about the phone, we got here at midnight,” said real estate agent Tony Wu, 27, who had dozed in a lawn chair overnight before getting ushered into the store at 9 a.m. “It was ridiculous. We ended up being, like, 30th in line.”
Analysts predict that the latest iPhone will outsell the previous iteration of the smartphone.
More than a million pre-orders for the phone poured in during the first 24 hours it was available online, while carriers AT&T, Sprint and Verizon reported selling out their allotment of pre-orders.
Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe told Businessweek that he predicts sales could hit 4 million phones this weekend alone — more than doubling the previous record held by the iPhone 4.
Others surveyed by the publication projected a more modest 2 million to 3 million during the first three days. The sales are being bolstered in part by Sprint, which became the third carrier to offer the iPhone.
The iPhone 4S, which was criticized by many analysts when it was unveiled Oct. 4 by Apple, launched Friday in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Japan, spawning lines outside of Apple stores, carrier stores and consumer electronics retailers around the globe.
Even Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs, lined up Friday outside an Apple store in Los Gatos, southwest of San Jose, to buy his wife an iPhone 4S. Wozniak, often known by the nickname of “the Woz,” was the first in line.
