More Than One Hundred Line Up At Midnight in Manhattan for Droid

[SharonW]

Hehe. Looks like we're off to a rockin' start.

Midnight Droid madness in Manhattan

NEW YORK--More than a hundred people were lined up at midnight Thursday outside a Verizon Wireless store in midtown Manhattan to be among the first people to buy the new Motorola Droid.

About 65 eager shoppers lined the south side of West 34th Street across from Macy's in Manhattan at 11:30 p.m. Thursday waiting for the store to open. Verizon opened the store from midnight to 2 a.m. to give people in the Big Apple a head start on the morning cell phone rush. By midnight, when the doors officially opened, about 100 people stood in line as Verizon officials ushered in customers 25 at a time.

Once inside the store, about 13 sales representatives and another four or five device specialists milled around, helping customers and demonstrating the phone's features. Representative were also helping customers transfer contacts to their new phone.

Verizon Wireless spokesman David Samberg said he felt confident that Verizon would be able to meet customer demand for the new Droid in New York City. The 34th Street store alone had at least 500 Droids as well as some HTC Android Eris phones, and Samberg said he expects anyone wanting to buy a Droid on Friday in New York City will be able to get one.

"Five hundred phones is a lot of phones to sell in one day," he said.

More here:
Midnight Droid madness in Manhattan | Wireless - CNET News

 

[largeselection]

This was pretty crazy. It was weird that there was such a crowd for this at midnight, but I saw no lines at any of the vzw stores during the day. They were all relatively crowded though so that seems like a good sign.

 

[SharonW]

This was pretty crazy. It was weird that there was such a crowd for this at midnight, but I saw no lines at any of the vzw stores during the day. They were all relatively crowded though so that seems like a good sign.

It's a real good sign considering how many alternatives there were for getting the phone. There are multiple online alternatives in addition to Best Buy, Walmart and Sears. Something that too few blogs or media sources fail to point out. All they want is a quick feed about lines or better yet, non-existent lines, to compare it to the iPhone. However, the circumstances are completely different with all the multiple sources to buy.

This site gave a pretty good, unbiased assessment, but considering NYC is the mother-lode of unhappy AT&T users, there's no wondering about their headline. Nonetheless, I also read about how well stocked all these stores were ahead of release:

Verizon Droid unleashed on NYC: 'We're gonna need more phones'

After weeks of build-up, Verizon Communications's (VZ) Verizon Wireless unleashed its new Google (GOOG)-powered Droid smartphone on Friday, and New York City retailers were selling out of the device -- billed as the first legitimate challenger to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone's first legitimate challenger -- on the first day.

"We're gonna need more phones," Amanda Leavelle, a Verizon Wireless store manager in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, said around 2 p.m. "I just checked, and our inventory is running low, so I've got to call for some more."

The Droid, a sleek touchscreen phone with a slide-out keyboard, is set to provide former cell-phone leader Motorola (MOT) with a crucial boost as it enters the all-important holiday season.

Droid-hunting consumers filled retail outlets across America's largest city Friday, many arriving at 7 a.m. to wait outside the SoHo store in the chilly fall weather. That location had the additional advantage of being smack in the path of the hundreds of thousands of New York Yankees fans, who filled lower Manhattan to honor the World Series champions with a parade.

"When the parade ended, the traffic just exploded in here," Leavelle said, as blue-and-white-clad Yankee fans roamed her store. She said she has recently joined Verizon Wireless after a job on Wall Street -- and that Friday afternoon's traffic was "four times" the average she'd seen since starting.

Meanwhile, at the Best Buy (BBY) electronics store just north of Houston Street, consumers who had pre-ordered the Droid eagerly awaited the chance to pick up their new phone. A store manager said the outlet was only filling pre-orders; no Droids are available for walk-ins.

More:
Verizon Droid unleashed on NYC: 'We're gonna need more phones' -- DailyFinance