NEW YORK, Sept 19 — Apple Inc’s stores attracted long lines of shoppers for the debut of the latest iPhones, indicating healthy demand for the bigger-screen smartphones.

The iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus went on sale today in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, before rolling out in France, Germany, Puerto Rico, Canada and the US Consumers in New York and San Francisco had already formed queues in the past two days to be among the first to buy the gadgets.

“Phenomenal start to a historic day and an honour to be with our incredible team and first customers in Sydney,” Angela Ahrendts, Apple senior vice president of retail and online stores, said in a post on Twitter.

The line of hundreds of people outside the Apple store in central Sydney snaked around the block, then down a parallel street before extending three more blocks. At the middle of the line, Xin Liu, 25, a student at the Sydney Institute of Interpreting and Translating, had waited more than 11 hours to buy her parents a new phone.

“When I came here, I thought there would be about 500 people,” she said. “But someone counted and there were already 800. I was really surprised.”

Apple’s iPhone rollout is the most important event this year for the Cupertino, California-based company. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is counting on the handsets to maintain Apple’s sales growth. The devices generate more than half of the company’s annual US$171 billion (RM553 billion) in revenue and precede a swath of other products, including new iPads and Apple Watch. The iPhones also sport larger screens — 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, compared with 4 inches for previous models — helping Apple appeal to new consumers.

HK protesters

In Hong Kong, hundreds lined up at the Apple store at the IFC mall to collect their new iPhones after registering online in advance. They were met by about a dozen protesters from Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour holding up signs that said “iSlave 6. Still made in sweatshops” and “Throw Away the Bad Apple.”

With Apple yet to say when the iPhone 6 will be available in China, Chen Daihui and Yao Haitao travelled from the mainland to Hong Kong to try to secure the devices. After failing to register online, they were both disappointed.

“All I wanted was to go inside and have a look, and they wouldn’t let me do that,” said the 32-year-old Chen, who travelled from Fujian. “Looks like I will just have to wait.”

Reviewer praise

The Apple store in Tokyo’s Shibuya area had about 600 people lined up an hour before opening, while the one in nearby Omotesando had about 1,000. They included a woman near the front of the line wearing a Steve Jobs mask, carrying a red apple.

“The most important aspect of first weekend iPhone sales are the long lines and the ‘record breaking’ sales numbers that generate the free press for the company,” Walter Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG LLC, wrote in a note to investors yesterday.

The buzz over the smartphones has been high since Cook unveiled them at a September 9 event. When the iPhones became available for pre-order a week ago, they racked up a record 4 million reservations in the first 24 hours and surpassed earlier releases. Resellers said users are trading in older phones to make room for the new iPhones, while some phones are being offered on Hong Kong’s black market for US$3,600.

Supply, demand

RBC Capital Markets polled 6,000 consumers and found that “an impressive 26 per cent of respondents who intend to purchase an iPhone are new” to Apple’s ecosystem, with the majority coming from phones using Google Inc.’s Android software, Amit Daryanani, an analyst at RBC, wrote in a September 17 note to investors.

A key question about the opening weekend is whether Apple will have enough inventory to satisfy demand.

Carl Howe, an analyst at 451 Research LLC, said Apple may sell 12 million to 15 million new devices this weekend. Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co, wrote in a note to investors that he’s projecting sales of 7 million to 8 million, which would fall short of last year’s first weekend sales of 9 million units of the iPhone 5s and 5c. Sacconaghi attributed it partly to supply constraints and to the fact that China isn’t one of the first countries selling the devices.

Apple isn’t rolling out the new iPhones in China on opening weekend, as it did last year with the iPhone 5s and 5c. China is one of the largest emerging markets of smartphone buyers, with China Mobile Ltd’s subscriber base at 794 million alone.

Adoption rate

The 24-hour adoption rate of Apple’s new iOS mobile operating system, which debuted September 17, hasn’t been as quick as last year, according to Chitika, an online-advertising network. While adoption rate was 7.3 per cent this year that fell short of 18 per cent for last year’s iOS 7 and 15 per cent for 2012’s iOS 6, according to Chitika, which tracked iOS-based online ad impressions within its network to estimate the take rate.

“Some users experienced issues downloading the update, as the installation software takes up more than 5GB of space if downloaded over-the-air,” Chitika said in a Web posting.

A spokeswoman for Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Chitika’s report.

The new iPhones are targeted directly at bigger-screen smartphones popular with consumers in Asia. Those phones typically run on Android and are made by Samsung Electronics Co, Xiaomi Corp and Lenovo Group Ltd, among others.

Russians in Berlin

Several hundred people lined up at the Apple store on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm before it opened, with many customers from Russia, which doesn’t get the new iPhones until September 26.

Security personnel were on hand to help with the line, allowing people to jump metal barriers for a 15-minute break for food or to use the bathroom. Yury Shchepetkov, a 24-year-old power engineer from Moscow, said he is supposed to get the new phones for his wife and two friends.

“I came here for tourism,” Shchepetkov said. “I had no idea I would be stuck in line for two nights without a sleeping bag.”

Bigger, faster

Pedro Regadillo began waiting outside Apple’s store on Fifth Avenue in New York about two weeks ago. The 59-year-old Air Force veteran, who has stood in line to buy iPhones three times before on the first day of sales, said yesterday he had his heart set on an iPhone 6 Plus.

“I love the size,” said Regadillo, who was near the front of a line that wound its way around the block and included tourists from Brazil. “I’ve got a problem with my vision.”

In downtown Portland, Oregon, there were about 50 people in fold-out chairs. The first person in line outside Apple’s downtown Toronto store was Dan Murchison, a retired truck driver, who was being paid to buy phones for a friend.

“I’m 62 years old, I remember when the first cell phones came out, they were gigantic and had 20 tons of batteries,” said Murchison, who began camping outside the store on September 17. “Then they all of a sudden shrunk them down to nothing. Now they’re getting big again! I do not understand why, but that’s the way it is.” — Bloomberg