Off I toddled last Friday morning, to a usually quiet local shopping centre on the stroke of 9am. Reason? To get myself a new iphone, launched that day. I had bought an iphone a few months back and had it stolen in London, but with the new model just around the corner, I felt I might as well wait with the insurance and get a shiny new 3G one (which happily is also much cheaper - so big win).
Anyway, I gets to the O2 store to find a queue snaking out of the store (which had opened at 8am specially) and then a guy pops out to say "oh well, we only got sent 6 - not sure when we get any more". Brilliant. Smacks of the ridiculous wasted marketing campaign that Apple are doing on the iPhone (similar to Nintendo's on Wii) whereby they create a demand for the item that far outstrips supply (and to some extent is still doing on the Wii).
I'm not sure what the point of this is - people who need that kind of functionality will no doubt either resort to the Ebay market (which is being well-fueled here - with opportunists queueing overnight to make a quick killing) or just go and buy another product.
I couldn't be arsed to queue (just in case one of the six didn't pass the credit checks!) and went and bought a cordless drill, which I later duly charged and stored in the garage. I made do with the 2.0 firmware update for my iPod touch, played with a few of the new apps for the iphone/touch and especially like the new remote software for the AppleTV which is really bloody great. I guess I'll pick up a new iphone when the furore has died down but this is really stupid.
Hint to manufacturers: When spending a lot on advertising - make sure you make enough products, it's where you make the money, after all...
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