Apple's iPhone to hit stores, lines grow
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SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK  - Hundreds of gadget fans,  or their paid stand-ins, lined up on Friday to be among the  first buyers of Apple Inc.'s  iPhone, a music and video  playing phone that seeks to reshape the mobile industry.
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(InfoWorld) - After standing in line for hours on Friday to buy the new Apple iPhone, some users were forced to wait even longer to activate the phones, while others found the store shelves empty and will have to wait another week for their phones to arrive in the mail. On Monday, staff at an AT&T store in Boston said they had run out of iPhones on Friday night while a line of customers still snaked out the door. People at the back of the line purchased their phones through "direct fulfillment" and will receive their phones through the mail in three to seven days, the store said. AT&T declined to release sales figures but said that virtually all of its stores have sold out of iPhones. Over the weekend, AT&T referred disappointed customers to the Apple Web site but now says it plans to begin selling iPhones through its online store as well, said AT&T spokesman Michael Coe. He did not give a date. AT&T downplayed the reported activation delays. "The vast majority of iPhone customers have completed the activation process in just a few minutes as planned," Coe said. "Only a very small number of customers who purchased an iPhone this weekend are experiencing issues with activation, and all our energies are focused on clearing up these difficulties just as quickly as possible." Apple did not return calls for comment. Some analysts blamed the delays on heavy user traffic. "AT&T's servers were slow due to the mass number of sign-ups in the first few hours with credit checks. This may have delayed some purchasing of iPhones," said Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research, in his Monday report to investors. Other customers experienced delays when they tried to switch to AT&T from other carriers, he said. Still, Wu upgraded his stock estimate for the company and predicted that the iPhone would become the fastest-selling product in Apple's history. Within three years, Apple could become one of the top smartphone vendors, changing the competitive landscape of that industry. Even customers who took their iPhones home on Friday faced potential delays in activating them. Users who registered their phones on the iTunes Web site saw a warning that the process could take between 24 and 48 hours, said Craig Henry, a 32-year-old IT administrator at a law firm in Massachusetts. Henry's wait lasted for three hours when he received an e-mail confirmation that his phone was activated. However, he soon faced another challenge when he tried to transfer his address book to the iPhone. "The hardest part for me was transferring my phone numbers because I was on Verizon and didn't have the software to keep the numbers on my PC. So I spent an hour typing in about 150 numbers," he said. He also had to get accustomed to the touchscreen interface, which relies completely on finger drags, flicks, and pinches instead of using hard keys. "It takes a little bit of getting used to. But the typing works fine; I was sending text messages all day on Saturday," Henry said. "When you're in the contacts sheet, you run your finger across the screen -- kind of like flicking a marble -- and it scrolls really fast, or you can drag it and scroll slowly." Many users were concerned about iPhone battery life, an issue that Apple tried to address on June 18 by upgrading the original battery before the product even launched. Still, Henry visited an Apple store on Saturday to buy a second charger so that he could power his iPhone both in his home and his office. Despite the hurdles of learning to use his new gadget, Henry said he suffered no buyer's remorse. "I was out on Saturday night, and everybody knew I had it and wanted to touch it," Henry said. "They made a little fun of me for waiting in line so long, but I don't think the wait was too bad. When people see it, they're amazed by it."
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Apple Inc.&#39;s iPhone hits store  shelves on Friday in a consumer spectacle that has whipped  gadget fans into a frenzy over a device that challenges  business as usual in the mobile phone industry.
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Apple hit its target for iPhone shipments a few weeks ahead of schedule, and one analyst thinks the price cut accounted for more than 100,000 sales last week and into the weekend.
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With lines snaking around Apple stores and hype in overdrive, the iPhone seemed like a good investment &#151; not for keeping but for reselling.
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Consumers planning to buy the iPhone at the end of the month will need an iTunes Store account to activate the device.
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Customers lined up in droves, some for days, but plenty of the phones are still available for the taking.Photos: Big Apple gets the iPhone
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(InfoWorld) - Apple Inc. will launch itsÂ iPhoneÂ in the U.S. on June 29, it said in TV commercials that began airing on Sunday. The much-talked-about iPhone combines the features of an iPod music and video player with those of a cellular telephone and will be available through AT&T Wireless Services Inc. AT&T, which acquired Cingular Wireless LLC, hasn't yet announced details of how it will sell the phones although long lines outside outlets are almost assured if the phone will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Two models will be available. One with 4G-bytes of memory will cost $499 and a version with double the memory will cost $599, the companies said previously. Announcement of the launch date ends a five-month guessing game that began on Jan. 10 when Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone during his keynote speech at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. During the keynote Jobs touted the iPhone as "revolutionary" and demonstrated its features to an enthralled audience. Chief among them is Multi-Touch, a touchscreen display system that can differentiate and react to simultaneous touches from two fingers. Typically touchpanels cannot handle input at more than one point on the screen. In addition to the 3.5-inch display, the phone will feature a 2-megapixel camera, headset and audio jacks, and an iPod dock. The first iPhone model will be quad-band GSM (global system for mobile communications), meaning it should work in almost every major country in the world. Exceptions to this will be Japan and South Korea, where GSM is not used. Data transmission will be supported by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and EDGE. Behind the iPhone's slick user interface is Apple's Mac OSX operating system. Apple had previously said that third-party developers wouldn't be able to write applications and load them onto the phone, but speaking last week Jobs said Apple is working on a way to allow developers access to the phone. Apple has also posted three of the TV commercials on its Web site. Â
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Major handset vendors have much more  to gain than to lose from the buzz Apple Inc&#39;s coveted iPhone  will create when it arrives in European stores for the key  shopping season ahead of Christmas.
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Apple Inc.  will start  selling its iPhone on June 29, a debut that will test whether  the company's design success with Mac computers and iPod media  players can carry over into mobile handsets.
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SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK  - Hundreds of gadget fans,  or their paid stand-ins, lined up on Friday to be the first  buyers of Apple Inc.'s  iPhone, a music and video  playing phone expected to reshape the mobile industry.
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Apple Inc.'s  iPhone hits  store shelves on Friday in a consumer spectacle that has  whipped gadget fans into a frenzy over a device that challenges  business as usual in the mobile phone industry.
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Even for Apple, which has thrived on taking risks, the iPhone represents an audacious bet -- possibly its biggest ever. When the new smart phone hits store shelves June 29, the company will have a lot more on the line than the success or failure of one product.
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Apple Inc.&#39;s  iPhone may be  too expensive for most Americans, but the much-hyped device is  expected to help AT&T Inc.  win quality customers and  drive shoppers into its stores.
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Among consumers, the excitement around Apple Inc.'s iPhone, launching on Friday, centers on its cool looks and innovative interface. In the cell phone industry, the iPhone will be closely watched because it breaks several conventions governing the relationships between handset manufacturers, carriers and consumers. If successful, Apple could end up changing the way phones and the industry work.
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You'll want to read this Q&A before standing in line to buy Apple's shiny new iPhone.
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- Apple Inc.  starts selling on Friday  the iPhone, which combines a wireless phone with music and  video-playing capabilities and Web browsing. The device is one  of the most highly anticipated U.S. product introductions of  the year.