TheStar.com | Business | iPhone has rocky launch iPhone has rocky launch
VIDEO: The iPhone arrives in Toronto COLIN O'CONNOR/TORONTO STAR Eager fans line up early to purchase Apple's iPhone outside of a Rogers Store on Yonge St. in downtown Toronto on July 10, 2008. The store will begin selling the much-hyped gadgets at 9 a.m. on Friday.
Jul 11, 2008 01:05 PM
Chris Sorensen
Business Reporter
The Canadian launch of the iPhone arrived amid a great deal of hype and a few hiccups for wireless provider Rogers Communications Inc.
It was slow going at a Rogers store at Yonge and Dundas Sts. in Toronto this morning as eager iPhone buyers waited patiently for their turn to purchase the all-in-one cellphone, iPod and mobile Web browser.
“I got here at midnight,” said Rob Ven, who still hadn’t managed to get inside the store as of 10 a.m. “Man, it sounds so desperate when you say it like that.”
With the help of private security guards, Rogers staff appeared to be letting in one customer roughly every 10 or 15 minutes as rumours of iPhone shortages and problems with Rogers’ computer systems enveloped the 100 or so people waiting under dreary skies.
Liz Hamilton, a spokesperson for Rogers, confirmed that the cable and wireless giant had run into some computer system issues because of the “unprecedented consumer demand” for the latest version of the device, which went on sale around the world today.
“Systems are slow and there were periods where they were down but at last check, they are up and running,” she said.
“Our customers are experiencing some wait times for our customer activation and even the process of ‘unbricking’ as iTunes was experiencing unprecedented demand worldwide.”
Similar reports emerged south of the border, Associated Press reported.
Kenny Pichardo, 24, was the first to buy an iPhone 3G at an AT&T store in the New York borough of Queens, but he said it took the store half an hour to get the phone working. Pichardo had camped out overnight to be first.
A spokesman for AT&T Inc., the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S., said there was a global problem with Apple Inc.'s iTunes software that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been planned.
Instead, employees were telling buyers to go home and perform the last step by connecting their phones to their own computers, spokesman Michael Coe said.
When the first iPhone went on sale a year ago, customers performed the whole activation procedure at home, off-loading employees. But the new model is subsidized by carriers, as is standard in the wireless industry, and Apple and AT&T therefore planned to activate all phones in-store.
Enthusiasm was high for the new model ahead of the 8 a.m. launch in the U.S. At the flagship Apple store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, a line of hundreds encircled the block. Many of them were already owners of the first iPhone, suggesting that Apple is preaching to the choir with the new model, which updates the one launched a year ago by speeding up Internet access and adding a navigation chip.
Thanks to subsidies by the carrier, the price has also been cut substantially to US$199 for the cheapest model in the United States.
Outside an AT&T store in Atlanta, more than a hundred people had lined up.
Edward Watkins, a 34-year-old engineer and avowed "techno nut," said he didn't mind paying an extra $10 a month to the carrier to upgrade his phone.
"I'd pay an extra $30 or $40 a month for that. It's a smoother running phone. It's driving a Beamer as opposed to a Chevy Metro."
Fuelled by bags of Doritos, three games of Scrabble and two packs of cigarettes, 24-year-old grad student Nick Epperson stayed up all night for a phone, after selling his old one online. When asked why he was waiting in line, he responded simply "Chicks dig the iPhone."
The new phone went on sale Friday in 22 countries. In most of them it was the first time any iPhone was officially sold there, though several countries have seen a brisk grey-market trade in phones imported from the U.S.
On the Japanese market, the iPhone's capabilities are less revolutionary, where people have for years used tech-heavy local phones for restaurant searches, e-mail, music downloads, reading digital novels and electronic shopping.
The latest Japanese cell phones have two key features absent on the iPhone – digital TV broadcast reception and the "electronic wallet" for making payments at stores and vending machines equipped with special electronic readers.
But they don't have the iPhone's nifty touch screen or glamorous image. By Friday morning, the line at the Softbank Corp. store in Tokyo had grown to more than 1,000 people, 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 in New Zealand's main cities 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."
L'iPhone 3G est disponible dans 21 pays ceux en bleue et vert foncé ; les pays en vert clair auront l'iPhone 3G bientôt disponible.
 Le nouvel iPhone 3G est sorti vendredi dans 21 pays, mais cette première journée de vente a été marquée par des problèmes de synchronisation de l'appareil avec iTunes.

Un porte-parole de l'opérateur télécom AT&T a déclaré qu'Apple travaillait à résoudre le problème mais qu'il s'est refusé à donner un délai. , a-t-il dit à propos des délais de résolution.

An Apple iPhone
Apple Store de l'Avenue Palo Alto en Californie en juin 2007.

CBC News trouve excessif le prix des services de base de l'iPhone, dont en Italie pour Vodafone vend l'iPhone à 499€ de 8Go dont le forfait est de 180 € par mois soit 2160 € par an cela en fait le forfait le plus cher pour les iPhones dans le monde suivi par le Canada avec un peu plus de 1368 €. Swisscom dont le service est le moins cher avec un peu moins de 62 € par mois.