No Lines for Verizon iPhone

Julio Ojeda-Zapata (via Daring Fireball):

So I was astounded to arrive at the mall at about 6:30 a.m. to find that NO ONE was in line at the Apple store. Ditto for the Best Buy Mobile store. One of the Verizon stores had a couple of people.

This doesn’t surprise me that much. The AT&T iPhone came out more than six months after its announcement. That’s 25% of a two-year contract, and a lot of people could wait for the phone. Since then, every iPhone has come out at predictable one-year intervals. Lots of warning that a new phone would be out that people would be sure to buy.

The Verizon iPhone hasn’t even been announced for a month yet. If they had announced this back in August, then a lot of people - including me! - would be in line for a Verizon iPhone right now. As it is, only a few Verizon users could plan on getting the iPhone when it came out. In addition, a lot of the ones that did already preordered from the site.

That said, the ridiculously-fast sellout of preordered phones does not make sense in light of slow brick-and-mortar sales.

Finally, one effect of this is that it’ll probably make for a smoother stream of sales - no having to build up inventory to make up for a huge initial demand if they don’t have it. Later on, the numbers of iPhone buyers will rise from today, and production will be at full steam.