For years now, the launch of every new version of the iPhone has been the cause of much jubilation among Apple fans and led to massive lineups outside the company's stores as the fans eagerly waited, sometimes for multiple hours on end, to get their hands on the latest and greatest from Apple.
This year, however, things seem to have taken a turn, with multiple sites reporting significantly smaller queues at launch, especially across Asia and Europe. Some locations, such as in New York and Singapore, have seen large lines reminiscent of previous years but the trend as a whole may seem to be dying down.
While the queues outside Apple's townhalls may be dwindling, the same will probably not be true of interest in the company's products, as it is expected to sell more than 200 million units of the device in the next year and will most likely increase revenues year-on-year.
The change may then simply be an amalgam of users waiting out for the iPhone X, the fancier of the two iPhones announced by Apple this year and slated to launch in November.
However, according to Angela Ahrendts, Senior VP of Retail at Apple, the reason for shorter queues at the physical Apple Store locations is a rather simple one:
"There are tens of millions of people who have the Apple Store app, and over the years they have understood that that's actually the fastest ways [to make their purchase], cause they have already gotten all set up ahead of time, so with their fingerprint, at 12:01, they are done. So, over half the orders that night will come in through the Apple Store app, [when] we turn the whole world on at once."
A better preorder system by Apple that allows buyers to simply get the device of their choice delivered to their doorstep or set aside for them at the nearest store, would indeed leave all the less reasons for someone to queue outside a store.
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