World’s biggest Apple store draws big iPhone crowd

LONDON: Hundreds of fans including one who had camped out for 10 days whooped for joy as the new iPhone 4S went on sale Friday at the Apple store in London, the US firm’s largest outlet on the planet.


Britain is known for its love for queues and staff handed out tickets and refreshments to a line of around 300 people that snaked around the block from the shop in the central Covent Garden theatre district.


“I’m a huge Apple fan,” said Rob Shoesmith, 30, from Coventry in central England, who camped outside the store for 10 days to get his hands on one of the new phones.


He said he had surviving by trading Apple items in exchange for food and water and making appeals for supplies by Twitter.Alon Shalev, 22, a student from Saint Petersburg in Russia who had been waiting line at the Apple store for two days, said: “BlackBerrys don’t work, they are slow.”


Of Jobs, he said: “I wanted the iPhone anyway but it is a big tragedy that he died, I was very sad to hear the news. But he made this company so he is a hero of our time, of the 21st century.