Diehard Apple fans queue for iPhone

A model presents an Apple iPhone November 9, 2007. A handful of shoppers queued in the cold and rain outside Apple's flagship London store overnight to be among the first in Britain to buy an iPhone, one of the year's most eagerly awaited gadgets.

LONDON/COLOGNE (Reuters) - A handful of shoppers queued in the cold and rain outside Apple's flagship London store overnight to be among the first in Britain to buy an iPhone, one of the year's most eagerly awaited gadgets.

Drinking free cups of tea and eating mince pies handed out by staff, about two dozen people gathered for the 6:02 p.m. Friday launch of the much-hyped phone.

First in line was student Graham Gilbert, 22, from Manchester, who arrived at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday and endured a wet and cold night on the street.

"I'm exhausted, running on empty," he said. "It's a nice day now, but it was raining horribly last night. There were seven of us out here and we didn't get any sleep."

He is going to pay 269 pounds for the phone, which combines a camera, music player and Internet browser. Gilbert already owns four iPods, and an Apple laptop and desktop computer.

"I don't actually use most of the iPods to be honest. But I can't actually bring myself to get rid of them," he said.

Seventh in the queue was Paul Acott, 40, a commercial director, who had queued since 5 a.m. on Friday to replace his existing Blackberry mobile.

"I saw the iPhone about 12 months ago and it really stuck in my mind as something that I wanted," he said. "I didn't want to run the risk of not being able to get one this weekend. I'm a big fan of good design."

In Germany, a few hundred people lined up at a Deutsche Telekom shop in Cologne, where T-Mobile let customers buy the music-playing and Web-browsing device at midnight before the phone went on sale across the country later in the day.

Sales staff cheered and applauded when the first dozen customers entered the store in the downtown shopping district of Cologne across from a Vodafone store.

T-Mobile representatives handed out blankets and umbrellas as well as hot tea, coffee and pretzels for those outside.

"All of us are Mac (Apple Macintosh computer) fans," said a man who works in a MP3 store and was waiting with two of his friends. "The iPhone is the best phone in the world."

Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann has pinned high hopes on the iPhone, which he said will attract new customers in Germany, where the firm faces tough competition.

Europe's biggest telecoms group by sales declined to give a sales expectation and did not say how many phones it had in stock. A T-Mobile spokesman merely said: "We have plenty."

Almost all the people lining up to buy the phone were men.

"It was love at first sight," one 50-year-old man said.

"It's ingeniously simple and simply ingenious," another man added, who said he has been an Apple user since 1984.

Away from the hardcore fans, however, Germans in central Frankfurt lived up to their reputation for thrift and resistance to hype.

Outside the T-Mobile store on Frankfurt's main shopping street, people hurried to work without noticing the placards outside the shop proclaiming the iPhone's arrival.

"Really? No, I had no idea," said one woman, when asked whether she was aware the iPhone went on sale on Friday.