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FRANKFURT/LONDON - The Brits are said to love a queue and Germans are known for getting up early to bag a place on the beach but Apple's coveted iPhone won't be worth spending days in line for, Europeans say.
While hundreds of people camped out outside Apple stores
in the United States during the countdown to the iPhone release, Europeans claimed they would resist the hysteria the device has whipped up in America when it goes on sale here.
The iPhone is a mobile phone, iPod music and video player, camera and Web browser in one, and will go on sale in the United States for $500 to $600 plus a compulsory service agreement amounting to at least another $1,400.
Apple is expected to start selling it in Europe this winter in the run-up to Christmas. It has not disclosed the price.
"I think I might queue up for a really desirable gadget maybe, but it would have to be a really groundbreaking product - and even then probably not overnight," said 25-year-old student Eeva Enkola in Helsinki.
"I am a creature of comfort," she said, contemplating the prospect of camping out on the street for an iPhone during the depths of the Finnish winter.
Richard Windsor, telecoms equipment analyst at Nomura, said Europeans would have the benefit of reports of users' actual experience to temper their enthusiasm.
"Yes, they are going to fall for it but no, they're not going to fall as hard as the Americans," he said. "They're unlikely to go ballistic."
Blogger Martin Lynch wrote on uk.gizmodo.com of the iPhone queues in America: "Anyone would think they were queuing for something really interesting, like a games console."
Although Europeans have been known to queue for days for games consoles like Sony's PlayStation 3 or Nintendo's Wii, no mobile phone has yet triggered such a response - although the iPhone is clearly more than just any old phone.
"Apple has a certain religion to it," Windsor said.
Queue up for fun
When asked whether mobile phone manufacturing market leader Nokia was irritated that no one queued to get their hands on its latest N-series phones, a spokesman said British customers tended to pay in advance and get new handsets in the post on the day they were shipped.
"But this is also a cultural thing," he added. "British people will definitely queue for a bargain. But you could hardly call the iPhone a bargain."
Although few believe the average British person would grab free hot dogs and stand for days outside a shop in the hope of spending up to $600 on a new phone - however desirable - the British do have a reputation for standing meekly in line.
George Mikes, a Hungarian writer born in 1912, devoted a chapter to the country's love of queuing in his gentle and humorous dig at the British, called: "How to be an Alien".
"At week-ends an Englishman queues up at the bus-stop, travels out to Richmond, queues up for a boat, then queues up for tea, then queues up for ice-cream, then joins a few more odd queues just for the sake of the fun of it, then queues up at the bus-stop and has the time of his life," he wrote.
Modern Britains are happy to stand in line for tennis at Wimbledon or new Harry Potter books. Many will also pack a sleeping bag and sleep in the streets before end-of-season sales at stores like Harrods or the clothing line launched by Kate Moss at Topshop.
Germans, too, are known for their thriftiness and love of a bargain, with cut-price computer offers from supermarkets attracting more publicity and bigger queues than any designer product launch.
"I wouldn't stand in line for it, the thing's far too expensive for me," said 30-year-old Munich clerk Sonja Balkheimer. "I use a mobile phone for calling and writing SMSs. I don't want to listen to music with it or any of the other bells and whistles the thing can apparently do."
"I wouldn't queue up for anything else either," said 40-year-old lawyer Sylvia Brahner. "I've never done it, not even for Madonna's H&M collection."
- REUTERS
