It's been a couple weeks now since Apple released the new iPhone 4S to the public. On release day, October 14th, I headed to my local Apple Store to check out the long lines and to see how Apple would handle the flock of people desperately waiting to get their hands on the new device. By 7 a.m., there were bunch of people around the store hoping to be first in line to purchase the newly Apple released gadget.
The Apple store opened their doors around 8 a.m., with cheerful smiles and warm greetings to the customers waiting in line. Apple employees were friendly, answering people questions about the new iPhone, and serving doughnuts, coffee or water for those got up early to buy the phone. After midday, the lines starting to slowly dissipated, while the store remained crowded with people playing around with the iPhone 4S models in display. At the AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint stores which were located within the mall, the lines were even shorter, with only a few customers patiently waiting to buy the iPhone 4S.
Many customers I got to interview claimed it was a fairly smooth process and not much of a waiting time to activate their new phones. Despite the enthusiasm at my local Apple store, the launch was marred somewhat by widespread costumer complaints with Apple's iCloud, which had problems from the start.
A lot of people waited for 30 minutes in line, and another couple of minutes to activate their phone lines.The vast majority of the iPhone 4S buyers who I got the chance to interview were already existing Apple AT&T customers, since the original iPhone.
One of the many features many were excited about was Apples' new iOS 5 that came preloaded on the Phone 4S, along with the iCloud service. The new model iPhone 4S looks similar to the previous iPhone 4, but has an upgraded camera of 8 megapixels, the faster A5 processor chip, and the voice-activated software Siri.
As I further investigated, some Apple fans were having trouble activating the newly iCloud service on the iPhone 4S with AT&T. It was later confirmed that the AT&T network couldn't handle that much traffic, causing some congestion during the activation process. Not that unusual since this is not first time AT&T had trouble with its network; it ran into a similar situation last year during the iPhone 4 launch. However, AT&T wasn't the only one to blame, as other networks ran into similar problems around the U.S., causing plenty of users to be frustrated for the inability to activate their handsets.
Worldwide Phenomenon
While the newly announced iPhone 4s was initially dubbed a disappointment by consumers because it looks the same as the last iPhone, many people stood in line for the Apple new iPhone. Apple fans in Sydney, Tokyo, Frankfurt and London took a big part of the iPhone 4S launch with thousands queuing around city blocks across the globe to snatch up the latest creation from Apple. Thousands around the world waited outside the store, some in line for two days even during stormy weather for a change to hold an iPhone 4S. It was said that in San Francisco, California the line stretched around the block at the Union Square Apple store. Lines around New York's iconic glass cube store on Fifth Avenue zit-zag back and forth across the plaza stretching halfway down the whole block. Across the Atlantic, at the Apple Store in London's Covent Garden (pictured) at least 700 people were queued up to buy the iPhone 4S on October 14th.
At the Apple store in Tokyo, Apple employees handed out umbrellas and water to keep customers cool while they stood in line for the iPhone 4S. One store in Tokyo's hip Shibuya district laid flowers in front of the Apple Store in tribute to Steve Jobs. The press reported, that AT&T wasn't the only one with problems with line activations, Japanese mobile carrier "Softbank Corp" temporarily put a stop for contract applications after its computer system crashed unexpectedly because of thousands of request than it was expected.
In Tokyo, approximately 80 people lined up a day before the iPhone debut, and there were more than 800 people by 8 a.m. before Apple opened its doors at the Ginza district store (pictured).
The Apple iPhone 4S is available in two colors—black or white—each of them with three different capacities: a 16GB model (for $199), a 32GB version (for $299) and a 64GB offering (for $399). Apple reportedly sold more than 4 million iPhone 4S devices in the first three days after it was introduced—practically selling more than twice as fast as the previous iPhone 4 model did when it launched last year. It is also said that both AT&T and Sprint broke sales records during pre-order of the phone, which started on October 7th. The new iPhone 4S recently started going on sale in more than 22 additional countries, which analysts expect fourth-quarter iPhone shipments to reach 30 million or more, almost twice as many as a year ago.
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