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iPhone 6: Apple Fans Line Up Around the World

Hordes of iFanatics mobbed Apple Stores and other retailers around the world Friday as the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus hit shelves.
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Hordes of iFanatics mobbed Apple Stores and other retailers around the world Friday as the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus hit shelves. For the first time Apple is selling two flagship iPhones: the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. Both iPhones are bigger, thinner and faster than the previous generation. They also come equipped with a chip that lets users make payments with their phones through the new Apple Pay service. Customers placed more than 4 million pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in the first day of pre-orders, marking a first-day record, Apple announced Monday. While millions of people still love the brand, a new Reuters poll shows that 16 percent of Americans think Apple has become less cool over the last two years, nearly a two percent increase from last year. Signs of high demand for the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were clear last Friday, when pre-orders for the 5.5-inch Plus sold out early.

NEW YORK CITY

On Fifth Avenue, a crowd counted down the seconds until the Apple Store opened like it was New Year's Eve.

"We just wanted the chance to be here first," Khurram Mhmood, 26, told NBC News. He had come with six friends and planned to buy 30 new iPhones to bring back to Dubai, where he said he planned to "give them to our family."

Phil Gebbia, 21, from New York, was in line with his friend Patrick Scoble, 20, who had failed to pre-order the new iPhone.

"My pre-order went through, I'm just here to be nice," Gebbia told NBC News. "I'm buying the iPhone 6, not the 6 Plus. It's all about pocketability."

GERMANY

"It’s great to tell everybody that you got it on the first day," Maximilian Ding, 20, told NBC News in front of the Apple Store in Frankfurt, Germany, where hundreds of people had lined up.

"My friends and my family sure think that I’m crazy to do this every year again," Louis Gabriel Lück, 19, told NBC News. "All the people here, I met last year, so they have become friends.”

JAPAN

Yes, that is a man with a golden Steve Jobs mask bringing an oversized iPhone into an Apple Store in Tokyo.

AUSTRALIA

The first man to get his hands on the iPhone 6 in Perth, Australia, promptly dropped it while being interviewed by a TV reporter.

LONDON

PARIS

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

IN-DEPTH

-- Keith Wagstaff, Julianne Pepitone, Rebecca Ungarino, and Carlo Angerer