iPhone fails to grip Germany

The iPhone melds a phone, Web browser and media player and costs 399 euros (297 pounds). Customers must agree to a two-year contract with T-Mobile for monthly fees between 49 and 89 euros.

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 downtown 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, declining to stop to give her name, when asked whether she was aware the iPhone went on sale on Friday.

One solitary would-be buyer loitered outside the shop an hour and a half before opening time.

"I'm astonished there's no one else here," said 34-year-old Uwe Berger, a computer programmer who fell in love with the iPhone on a recent visit to the United States.