iPhone Frenzy Hits Toronto

Hundreds of people braved the soggy conditions and deprived themselves of sleep to be among the first in Canada to purchase the new iPhone.

The touch screen device, which lets you surf the web, send email, play music, watch video, take pictures and, of course, make calls, went on sale at select stores across the country at 8am Friday, including the Rogers outlet at Yonge and Dundas Square where more than 200 people camped out overnight.

Jordon Brown, a high school student, had been standing outside the downtown store since 4pm Thursday and secured the first spot in the queue.

“It’s worth it,” he said.

Once he made it inside the store he explained who he’d call first on his new gadget and why.

“I’m going to call my friend who called me a loser for doing this … I’m going to tell him to Google me,” he said.

Rob Cowley said this gadget is worth a long wait in the rain.

“In terms of cell phones, this really is, I think, it’s safe to say a giant leap forward,” he said.

A pair of girls who couldn’t have been more than 13 years old gave their reasons for coming down:

“We want an iPhone,” exclaimed one.

“I want an iPhone,” agreed the other. “We’re excited.”

Rogers hasn’t divulged exactly how many iPhones it has in stock but said its supply will definitely meet the demand. Apple says it hopes to sell 10 million units worldwide by the end of the year.

“It’s a very big day and reports are that this is an unprecedented demand…we’re being sold out all over the place,” bragged John Boynton, Senior Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer at Rogers Wireless.

“We’re doing our hardest to get the phones,” Boynton promised. “The Apple team is working hard in the Asian market where they’re manufacturing them, and we’re on the phone every hour with them trying to get more.”

But the demand has been enormous: “We’re talking tens of thousands [of units], and they gave us even more than we asked for, so, thank you Apple for that. When we get a new shipment we’ll let everybody know.”

Boynton also pledged to notify customers when they were sold out.

“You can still go to rogers.com and order as well,” he said first. Then he added, “We will send a note out as soon as we get that confirmation. We want to be really precise and we don’t want anybody to wait in line anymore.”

Despite the fact the price of the device has dropped significantly since it first hit the market in the United States, it’s still a pricey gadget. The new, faster 3G iPhone costs about $200 for an 8GB model and $300 for the 16GB version.

Rogers has the only network in Canada capable of running the new 3G phone and has offered an incentive for those who decide to purchase and activate their iPhones by Aug. 31. It’s cutting the fee for 6GB of data to $30 a month for Web browsing, email and video on a three-year contract.

Boynton also talked about that recent decision.

“What company wouldn’t listen to its customers, right? This 5 percent of the population that wants to use a ton of data, tens of thousands of web pages, and hours and hours of data, YouTube kind of thing, these are special people.and we asked for more data for them.”

He added that this amount is more than what most people need, a statement that not everyone is sure to agree with.

The new iPhone also debuted in other parts of the world Friday, creating a frenzy in many Asian and European cities. A 22-year-old New Zealander was the first person to get one, thanks to the time difference.

Armed guards watched over the 500 iPhones on sale in Hong Kong and 1,500 people lined up outside the store selling the gizmos in Tokyo.

To take a closer look at what you could be paying, click here.  

What Are You Paying For? iPhone Product Specs

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It seems that all is not well in the land of Apple. A surge of new customers eager to try out their 3G gadget appears to have overloaded the iTunes servers. That software is necessary to use an activated iPhone.

Shortly after the 9am launch, this warning appeared on macrumors.com:

Notice: The server problems extend to users who are trying to upgrade their iPhones and iPod Touches to the latest firmware update. In fact, readers should avoid upgrading to iPhone 2.0 until these issues are resolved. Until you are able to connect to the iTunes servers, your iPhone will be left in an unusable state after the 2.0 upgrade.

And Business Week  reported a similar problem.

The author’s “attempt to do the initial sync on both a Mac and a Windows machine failed. Windows reported a timeout error trying to connect to the iTunes store, while the Mac just sat there forever saying “Connecting to iTunes Store.”