By KELVIN CHAN
AP Business Writer
HONG KONG (AP) - In a now
familiar global ritual, Apple fans jammed shops from Sydney to Paris to
pick up the tech juggernaut's latest iPhone.
Eager buyers formed long lines
Friday at Apple Inc. stores in Asia, Europe and North America to be the
first to get their hands on the latest version of the smartphone.
In London, some shoppers had
camped out for a week in a queue that snaked around the block. In Hong
Kong, the first customers were greeted by staff cheering, clapping,
chanting "iPhone 5! iPhone 5!" and high-fiving them as they were
escorted one-by-one through the front door.
The smartphone will be on sale
in the U.S. and Canada hours after its launch in Australia, Japan, Hong
Kong, Singapore, Britain, France and Germany. It will launch in 22 more
countries a week later. 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
glitch prone. Apple received 2 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 launched 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.
Analysts have estimated Apple will ship as many as 10 million of the new iPhones by the end of September.
Some fans went to extremes to be among the first buyers by arriving at Apple's flagship stores day ahead of the release.
In downtown Sydney, Todd Foot,
24, showed up three days early to nab the coveted first spot. He spent
about 18 hours a day in a folding chair, catching a few hours' sleep
each night in a tent on the sidewalk.
Foot's dedication was largely a
marketing stunt, however. He writes product reviews for a technology
website that will give away the phone after Foot reviews it.
"I just want to get the phone so I can feel it, compare it and put it on our website," he said while slumped in his chair.
In Paris, the phone launch was
accompanied by a workers' protest - a couple 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 - urged by a
small labor union to demonstrate at Apple stores around France - were
far outnumbered by lines of would-be 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, 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 grey 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.
Wong was required to give his
local identity card number when he signed up for his iPhone on Apple's
website. 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's 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
Wong, who hoped to make a profit of HK$1,000 ($129).
Tokyo's glitzy downtown Ginza
district not only had a long line in front of the Apple store, but
another across the main intersection at Softbank, the first carrier in
Japan to offer iPhones.
Hidetoshi Nakamura, a 25-year-old auto engineer, said he's an Apple fan because it's an innovator.
"I love Apple," he said, standing near the end of a two-block-long line, reading a book and listening to music on his iPod.
"It's only the iPhone for me."
___
Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Yuri
Kageyama in Tokyo, Faris Mokhtar in Singapore, Tom Rayner in London and
Oleg Cetinic in Paris contributed to this report.
Follow Kelvin Chan on at twitter.com/chanman
Copyright
2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The iPhone 5 launches on Friday.
