Expect a Long Wait in Line for Your iPhone 3G

Apple's iPhone 3G went on sale today. In the U.S., the on-sale time was 8:00am in your local time zone. I've just come back from visiting two AT&T stores. In both locations, the queues were huge.The first store was a flagship stand-alone store on a major street in the Bay Area. At 9:30am, the line was at least 50 people deep, mainly young men and women that I'd guess were in their 20s.

The second store was an AT&T store in a strip mall in a smaller suburb. Its line was a bit shorter, about 35 people. The man in the front of the line said he'd been there since just after 8:00am.

When a woman came out of the store, she said that she had been in line since before 8:00am. She was an existing Verizon customer signing up for the iPhone, migrating her Verizon account and phone number to AT&T. The whole transaction took about half an hour, she estimated -- but was delighted to be clutching her new white 16GB iPhone 3G!

You should expect the lines to stay bad today (Friday) at both Apple and AT&T stores... and then get worse over the weekend. If you're not in a hurry, you'll probably do better waiting for Monday or Tuesday to get your iPhone, assuming that the stores don't run out.

Don't want to go to an Apple or AT&T store to buy your iPhone 3G? Well, too bad. Neither company offers them online or via telephone order. If you want to get an iPhone, you've have to go there in person.