As expected, long lines for Apple's iPhone 5
Last Updated 10:24 a.m. ET
(CBS/AP) HONG KONG — 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 at 8 a.m. local time, 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 will also go on sale at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Target, Wal-Mart, and AT&T, Verizon and Sprint retail outlets.
The iPhone 5 is thinner, lighter, has a taller screen, faster processor, updated software and can work on faster "fourth generation" mobile networks.
In his review on CNET.com, Scott Stein calls the latest iteration "the iPhone we've wanted since 2010, adding long-overdue upgrades like a larger screen and faster 4G LTE in a razor-sharp new design. This is the iPhone, rebooted."
The drawbacks for Stein? "Sprint and Verizon models can't use voice and data simultaneously. The smaller connector renders current accessories unusable without an adapter."
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.
At 7 a.m. lines were already around the block at Apple's N.Y. flagship store on Fifth Avenue. When the store opened at 8 a.m., hundreds of customers high-fived Apple employees as they streamed through the doors, reports CBS Station WCBS.
Hazem Sayed, the founder and CEO of the social network Vibe, spent more than a week in line, and was surrounded by a scrum of reporters as he came out of the Fifth Avenue store this morning as one of the first owners of the new iPhone. "For me to have as a software, tech person, to have it on the first day and be able to work with it is an advantage," Sayed told WCBS. "This is like love at first sight."
Many went to extremes to be among the first buyers by arriving at Apple's flagship stores day ahead of the release. Sayed told CNET earlier this week he may never undertake another marathon wait again; over the past week, he caught a cold, suffered from sleep deprivation, and ate fast food the entire time.
And not all marathoners were in it for themselves: CNET reports people have been paying stand-ins to wait in line for them. CNET's Sumi Das talked to one hardy soul who's been camping out in San Francisco since Monday morning, who is being paid $1,500 to pick up the new phone for an anonymous buyer.
Outsourcing your place in the iPhone 5 line
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.
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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 $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 $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."