[GuillaumeB]

Just wondering...
Tumbleweeds outnumber punters, as iPhone's First Night flops | The Register

[Big Mac]

I have no reason to believe it isn't.

[nikstar101]

Well that seems to conflict with the news story on Macnn's front page:
MacNN | iPhones fly off shelves in UK

The again i guess there could have been only a few people actually at the grand unveiling. But since there were queues outside i would have said that was unlikely. But then again i didn't expect every Carphonewarehouse,O2 and Apple store to be packed as that would probably take most of the population of the UK!!

Nick

[CorpITGuy]

O2 says iPhone 'fastest-selling' device ever - Times Online

Here's the opposite view.

[nikstar101]

Macworld UK seems to think they are selling like hot-cakes
Thousands buy iPhones in UK - iPod/iTunes - Macworld UK

It seems that the register is a bit off or they're journalists went to the completely the wrong stores!!

[Cold Warrior]

You have to take anything on "El Reg" with a grain of salt. Their writers routinely mix hypothesis, hyperbole, facts, and personal fiction, with little indications of separation.

But I do keep them bookmarked, and they're a part of my RSS collection.

[Cold Warrior]

Wired has an article with a bit more thought and less emotion than The Register.

European iPhone Launch: Flop or Not? | Epicenter from Wired.com

[amyjones09]

naw its all BS

[all2ofme]

There weren't bonkers lines where I got mine on launch night (Oxford, at an O2 store), but lines there were.

Somewhat OT - in my experience O2 botched a few elements of the launch:
- there were maybe 40 people in line for the phone where I was, and they had perhaps 25% of the shop given over to the launch. Most of it was wasted space because the two tills they had were on the same wall about halfway down the shop. On the same wall they had eight(ish) iPhones out for people to look at, but the huge majority of the people that had turned up wanted to buy, not to play. That meant half a dozen staff doing nothing while two at the tills were run off their feet. Still, likely to be a one-off for the O2 stores; I don't think they're built for the footfall the Apple stores get. The hand-held purchase points they've had in Regent St in the past have been excellent.
- more annoyingly, when I bought mine they mentioned a two day insurance policy in case something went wrong in the first two days. You're already covered for that sort of thing with your consumer rights in the UK, but the automatic nature (everyone got it on launch as far as I saw) of this two day thing didn't bother me until I got an email a week later thanking me for my order. I had to call customer services to find out what this order was, only to find out that it was a continuation of the insurance policy I'd said I'd wanted. Customer Services wouldn't remove it and told me to call the point of sale or go into a branch, which really got my back up. Spoke to the manager in Oxford who helped not a bit (and bordered on rude) before CS relented and removed the order. I can't imagine the Apple store pulling that sort of prank. Crap behaviour.

As an aside - Guillaume: your thread title could have been a bit more helpful!