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I will be in the unated states at the 10s october. Can i by unlocked iphone in the Apple store without lines ??
 
Your fears won't happen if Apple follows the same method they've used since halfway through the 4 launch and the iPhone 4S launch. What the ARS staff will do is around 6 or 7 am walk the line and ask everyone what they want. They will give you up to 2 (two) iPhone tickets per person, you tell them what colour, size, and model, and they will ensure that they are in stock for you and give you a ticket listing exactly which phone you requested. You cannot change your mind once you get your ticket(s). The Apple Store only has as many tickets as they have phones in stock + some for contingencies. Ergo, by 8am you will know whether or not there is a phone(s) available for you.

My key issue is that unlocked phones should be available in store, as on the iPhone 5 launch they were online only.

Thank you for your fabulous info! As I've never done launch day line waiting I didn't know about the ticket system.
 
doesn't make much sense

yeah, this doesn't really make too much sense. I know some might think apple would like to see "long lines" which give some possible indication of demand or scarcity, but at the end of the day (and technically the week) they want to report how many units were ACTUALLY sold or delivered to customers during that first weekend (as stupid as that stat really is) and that more than anything will drive the equity price or even further demand.

Having it be stand in line only, will only turn away large groups of people who are simply fatigued with the concept of standing in line for sometimes hours/days to get a new iDevice..

If they did pre-orders, with either delivery or in store pickup, they'd actually sell more phones IMHO.
 
Thank you for your fabulous info! As I've never done launch day line waiting I didn't know about the ticket system.

No worries!! Launches are usually a great experience. I worked 42 of 48 hours on the first 2 days of iPhone 4 launch!! That was a fiasco until we adopted the ticket system, but it was fun and I have good memories.

We literally had 4 hours lines for a week and a half straight. A good chunk of it was due to the Canadian big 4 cell carriers having archaic systems that can't handle the load of an iPhone launch. Hold times to talk to an agent which was required for most upgrades were 3 hours plus.

4S and 5 launches were seamless though, ARS had learned from the iPhone 4 launch. The only funny thing with the 5 launch was a couple days later we had clients returning phones by the boatload that they had preordered to different addresses. By simultaneous launch in China the scalper market that was expected, just wasn't there.

With regards to the comment of wait five hours at 6am, or 1 hour at 1pm you're really really taking your chances, especially if you aren't looking for a common model, i.e. 64GB. This may not be the case at flagships, but at smaller stores, and specifically, Canadian stores, we sold out on every launch day 1, except 16GB whites for the iPhone 5.
 
Chinese site said the 17th for pre-orders

Someone mentioned that pre-orders on the Chinese site said 9/17. I noticed I am not eligible for an upgrade till that date. I am wondering if there is a correlation.
 
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