By the time Fortune columnist Philip Elmer-DeWitt arrived at Apple’s flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York City this morning, the sun was coming up. Barricades were in place, and a line of hopeful customers filled Apple Plaza, and stretched around the block.
I started a head count at 7:00 a.m. and 10 minutes later reached 1,068 at the end of the line, half-way up 58th Street.
That’s 50% more than the 710 I counted at the same time last year for the iPhone 5 launch, which itself was 52% higher than the line for the 4S.
Final line count at 7:53: 1,213, and new customers were joining the line at the rate of around 15 per minute.
Everyone that DeWitt asked told him they were there for the iPhone 5s.
DeWitt also supplied a chart that Piper Jaffray’s Gene (Now, Grandpa…) Munster posted on previous counts last year.
Nice numbers for a phone some analysts were expecting no one to care about…
(Update – 09/20/13) – DeWitt has posted an update:
By 8:45, when I went back to see how much the crowd had grown, the line was snaking up 5th Ave. and the count had swelled to 1,410.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster’s posted a similar count: 1,417 at the big glass cube plus another 405 at Apple’s Upper West Side store.
