Apple's marketing machine is in overdrive on the eve of the release of the 3G iPhone, but the company is unlikely to persuade most potential buyers in the United States from waiting until the holiday shopping season or beyond to purchase the media player-smartphone hybrid, a survey released Thursday showed.

While there's little doubt that hundreds of thousands of people worldwide will be in stores Friday to be among the first to own the device, these early adopters are not reflective of the overall attitude of mainstream consumers, so says a survey conducted this month by the Solutions Research Group.

"While there is no question there will be lots of people in stores on Friday, even Apple is not immune to the way people are feeling about the economy," Laura Lee Gambee, an SRG spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

The same survey showed that 66% of Americans are "really concerned" about rising gas and energy prices, and "in that light, perhaps it's not surprising to see that most seem to want to wait and see till Xmas or later," Gambee said.

Fully 49% of survey respondents were nearly evenly split in saying they would most likely buy the new iPhone in November or December or in early 2009. Fully 16% said their purchases would come later.

As to buying an iPhone sooner, 6% of the respondents said it would most likely be this month or next, and 15% said September or October. The remainder said they weren't sure when they would buy an iPhone.

Apple on Thursday opened its App Store for the new iPhone, unleashing about 500 applications that can run on the device. The company also launched an upgrade of the operating system for the original iPhone, making the App Store accessible to the older device.

Third-party developers have built a variety of applications for the new iPhone's debut. Available software includes games, educational programs, mobile commerce, and business productivity tools. A third of the applications are games.

About a quarter of the App Store software is free, with 90% of the paid software available for $9.99 or less.