Diehard Apple fans queue for iPhone

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.