The bMighty Blog -- iPhone

Looking for an iPhone 3G? Maybe you got lucky. Maybe not.

This morning, at around 9:30am, I drove past the AT&T store near Stanford University in Palo Alto. The queue was wrapped around the building — many, many dozens of people.

Around 2:00pm, I dropped into another store, a major one in a Bay Area suburban shopping center. The store was quiet. According to one of the sales managers, whom I'll call "Linda," the store ran out of iPhone 3G handsets early on Friday. Overnight, they received only 15 more, and all were the 8GB black models.

Linda said that when the store opened there was quite a line, but many customers weren't happy that the 16GB black or white phones weren't available. Some left empty-handed, but others took a 8GB black iPhone 3G anyway, she said.

Otherwise, it's been quiet in the store, she said, with nearly every customer interested in the iPhone, or in buying iPhone accessories. Their other phones and gear aren't moving, she said.

However, Linda did that that as of today, the store had a new option: a process called Direct Fulfillment, which they couldn't offer on Friday. It's like a reservation: The customer pre-purchases the iPhone 3G of his/her choice, and the appropriate handset will be sent to the store earmarked for that customer.

The Direct Fulfillment phones should begin arriving toward the end of the week, Linda said. When the handset comes in, the store e-mails the customers that the phone is in, and then the customer comes into the store to have it activated.

Spotlight on Solutions

(Sponsored By Cisco)