At Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York, marketing head Greg Joswiak opened the doors to a crowd of customers, social media posts showed. Some posts said people had camped outside the store since as early as 4am local time (4pm, Singapore time).
Mohit Chandel, a 32-year-old San Francisco resident and consultant, had promised his father in Singapore an iPhone Duo for his retirement but forgot to pre-order one.
So when he spotted a dozen people lining up outside an Apple store around 11pm Thursday, he joined them, ordered a bench and pillow from Walgreens and settled in for the night.
“He doesn’t know that. All the pre-orders are gone. He’s expecting a Duo sometime in the mail so now I have to buy it,” Chandel said.
In China, a soft consumer market and rising memory costs have led to six straight quarters of declining smartphone shipments, although Apple’s market share has rebounded as some buyers trade up to premium devices.
Liu Wei, a 26-year-old healthcare professional, already has a foldable phone from Xiaomi 1810.HK, but still queued outside a Shanghai store from 6 a.m. for Apple’s first foldable.
“I’ve used Apple products for many years and I have more trust (in the brand), so I bought one on launch day to try it out,” he said.
Many queued to pick up pre-orders, while others hoped for limited stock or to browse display models.
Others were resellers.
In Hong Kong, May, 38, who declined to give his full name, bought a 256GB iPhone Duo, priced at HK$17,499 (US$2,231.73), in an online pre-sale and planned to resell it for a profit of around HK$4,000. “A few meals’ worth of money,” he joked.
Paul Francis, 53, was one of several dozen fans who queued overnight outside London’s Regent Street store in pouring rain.
“Some people think it was mad. Including myself,” the charity manager said.
