NEW
YORK (AP) - The launch of Apple Inc.'s much-anticipated new iPhone
turned into an information-technology meltdown on Friday, as customers
were unable to get their phones working. "It's such grief and
aggravation," said Frederick Smalls, an insurance broker in Whitman,
Mass., after spending two hours on the phone with Apple and AT&T
Inc., trying to get his new iPhone to work.
In stores, people
waited at counters to get the phones activated, as lines built behind
them. Many of the customers had already camped out for several hours in
line to become among the first with the new phone, which updates the
one launched a year ago by speeding up Internet access and adding a navigation chip.
A spokesman for AT&T, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the
U.S., said there was a global problem with Apple's iTunes servers that
prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been
planned.
Instead, employees are telling buyers to go home and
perform the last step by connecting their phones to their own
computers, spokesman Michael Coe said.
However, the iTunes servers were equally hard to reach from home, leaving the phones unusable except for emergency calls.
The problem extended to owners of the previous iPhone model. A software update released for that phone on Friday morning required the phone to be reactivated through iTunes.
"It's a mess," said freelance photographer Giovanni Cipriano, who
updated his first-generation iPhone only to find it unusable.
When the first iPhone went on sale a year ago, customers performed the
whole activation procedure at home, freeing store employees to focus on
sales. But the new model is subsidized by carriers, and Apple and
AT&T therefore planned to activate all phones in-store to get
customers on a contract.
The new phone went on sale in 21 countries on Friday, creating a global burden on the iTunes servers.
The iPhone has been widely lauded for its ease of use and rich
features, but Apple is a newcomer to the cell-phone business, and it's
made some missteps. When it launched the first phone in the U.S. a year
ago, it initially priced the phones high, at $499 and $599, then cut
the price by $200 just 10 weeks later, throwing early buyers for a
loop.
Rollouts to other countries were slow, as Apple tried to
get carriers on board with its unusual pricing scheme, which included
monthly fees to Apple. The business model of the new phone follows
industry norms, and the price is lower: $199 or $299 in the U.S.
On Thursday, Apple had problems with the launch of a new data service,
MobileMe. The service is designed to synchronize a users personal data
across devices, including the iPhone, but many users were denied access
to their accounts.
Enthusiasm was high ahead of the Friday morning launch of the new phone.
Alex Cavallo, 24, was one of hundreds lined up at the Fifth Avenue
store, just as he had been a year ago for the original iPhone. He sold
that one recently on eBay in anticipation of the new one. In the
meantime, he has been using another phone, which felt "uncomfortable."
"The iPhone is just a superior user experience," he said. The phone
also proved a decent investment for him: He bought the old model for
$599 and sold it for $570.
Nick Epperson, a 24-year-old grad student,
spent the night outside an AT&T store in Atlanta, keeping his cheer
up with bags of Doritos, three games of Scrabble and two packs of
cigarettes. Asked why he was waiting in line, he responded simply
"Chicks dig the iPhone."
IPhone fever was strong even in Japan, where consumers are used to tech-heavy phones that do restaurant searches, e-mail, music downloads,
reading digital novels and electronic shopping. More than 1,000 people
lined up at the Softbank Corp. store in Tokyo and the phone quickly
sold out.
"Just look at this obviously innovative design,"
Yuki Kurita, 23, said as he emerged from buying his iPhone, carrying
bags of clothing and a skateboard he had used as a chair during his
wait outside the Tokyo store. "I am so thrilled just thinking about how
I get to touch this."
The phone went on sale first in New Zealand, where hundreds of people lined up outside stores to snap it up right at midnight—8 a.m. Thursday in New York.
"Steve Jobs knows what people want," Web developer Lucinda McCullough
told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple's chief
executive. "And I need a new phone."
In Germany, sales were
brisk at local carrier T-Mobile's stores, particularly in Munich,
Hamburg and Cologne, said spokeswoman Marion Kessing.
___
AP Business Writers George Frey in Frankfurt, Germany, Yuri Kageyama in
Tokyo and Greg Bluestein in Atlanta contributed to this report.