iPhone Watch D+1: Maple-flavoured schadenfreude

The Canadian launch of the Apple iPhone 3G wasn't quite the run-away success that Rogers may have hoped for, especially as they appeared to have remarkably small quantities of product on hand: 100 iPhones per store!

Apple's new iPhone was launched across the country Friday after a publicity buildup more suited to a mega-popular video game, but the lineups for the new high-tech toy weren't quite on the same scale.

The hundreds of Canadians who did spend hours in line Friday were among the first in the country to buy the highly-hyped iPhone - a year after U.S. consumers were first to buy it.

I'm not sure I get how this was supposed to work: Rogers expected "record first-day sales", yet they don't even have enough iPhones available to cover the line-up outside the Toronto store on opening day? And, in a brilliant display of sensitivity to their eager customers . . . nobody goes out to tell the folks waiting all those hours in line that only 100 of them are going to be served?

Customers were being admitted to the Toronto location at a blistering pace of "one customer roughly every 10 or 15 minutes". It's rather amazing that there were not more altercations in the queue, as there had been in a reported case in Florida.

Worse, both for Rogers and other suppliers, servers were unable to handle the sudden load as new customers tried to get their iPhones activated and existing customers tried to update their firmware to take advantage of the new operating system features.

Liz Hamilton, a spokesperson for Rogers, confirmed that the cable and wireless giant had run into some computer-system issues because of the "unprecedented consumer demand" for the latest version of the device, which went on sale around the world yesterday.

"Systems are slow and there were periods where they were down but at last check, they are up and running," she said in the early afternoon. "Our customers are experiencing some wait times for our customer activation and even the process of 'unbricking' (unlocking) as iTunes was experiencing unprecedented demand worldwide."

Out in the RuinedIphone.com zone, where over 64,000 have signed the petition, they're trying to put together a group to approach Rogers in hopes of getting a better deal:

Ok. The only way to make a difference is to get a petition together and force a deal. We are trying to get as many people as possible together in order for us to negotiate a great deal on celluar data and voice plans to our visitors. Once this list hits 10,000 people we will approach Rogers, Bell, Telus and other alternatives to offer people a plan that will rival any plan in the states. The more people the better. Please enter your name only if you are serious.

We are going to negotiate a deal that will hopefully take care of cancellation fees from your current provider. The more numbers we get the more power we will have.