By SHARA TIBKEN And SHAYNDI RAICE
Verizon Wireless began selling Apple Inc.'s iPhone in stores at 7 am Thursday, drawing suprisingly thin crowds at Apple's flagship Manhattan store but longer lines elsewhere.
At the Apple store on Fifth Avenue, there were more media and store employees than the approximately dozen people in line when the doors opened at 7 a.m. ET.
"It was weird being first here. I expected a longer line," said Akira Sawada, a 32-year-old waiter from Queens, N.Y.
A similarly quiet scene played out uptown at a Verizon Wireless store at 86th and Lexington Avenue, where Julia Watkinson, a 19-year-old college student, also was surprised to be in front of only a handful in line.
"I went yesterday and asked what time they thought people would start coming," Watkinson said. "They said 5. I got here at 5:30, and no one was here."
In New Jersey, the Verizon iPhone was generating more heat. More than 40 people waited outside at the Verizon Wireless store in Hoboken, N.J., where customers started gathering about an hour before the store opened. Brian Campe, an assistant director in TV production for NBC's Law & Order SVU, said he was waiting on line to buy an iPhone for his girlfriend after she returned an Android phone that he bought her for Christmas.
"The iPhone is that much better," said Mr. Campe, who has owned an iPhone on AT&T's network for years. Analysts are expecting that the phone will be a big seller for both companies. Sales estimates vary, but many analysts estimate Apple will likely sell 9 million to 13 million iPhones on Verizon's network this year, a big boost in the phone's most important market. Last week, when Verizon Wireless allowed existing customers to pre-order the iPhone ahead of the Feb. 10 launch, the company said the number of iPhones it sold in the first two hours of availability exceeded the one-day total for any other device's debut in the carrier's history, though it declined to say how many were ordered.
Those waiting in line said they were attracted by the combination of the iPhone's features and Verizon Wireless's reputation for reliable coverage. "I've never had Verizon," said Rominel Peguero, a 24-year-old accountant. "I've just heard it's the top dog for service."
Ariel Abaya, 60, a cab driver from Woodside, Queens, said he started driving New Yorkers to Apple and Verizon stores at 5:30 this morning. By 8am he had taken eight passengers to buy the new iPhone, three to a Verizon store in Harlem and five to Apple's flagship store on Fifth Avenue.
Still, by 9am, two hours after opening, Apple's flagship store on 5th Ave. remained fairly quiet, with only a couple of customers looking at the store's iPhone display. Christine Araman, 35 of Park Slope, Brooklyn, stood outside the Apple store, hoping to convince a long line of new iPhone customers to download the NYC Mate app that offers free transit maps. But she was disappointed. "It was slow to start," she said. "I think people are trickling in but they're not banging down the door."
There was a similar scene at a Verizon Wireless store a few blocks away. To deal with the potential crowds, Verizon set up a system where customers had to wait outside in line, fill out a card and wait for a sales representative before being allowed entrance to the store.
That didn't sit well with Sarah Weiss of Manhattan. "I've been a Verizon customer for 15 years and they won't let me into the store," she said. Ms. Weiss came to buy an iPhone but left angrily when she was kept waiting outside, even though there were few customers in the store who were far outnumbered by sales representatives. A Verizon spokesperson at the store said, "there is a strict process that everyone has been following."
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