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Telecom & Wireless

Will Lines for iPhone 6 Get a Mile Long?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Apple-store
courtesy of Apple Inc.
The Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) store at 5th Avenue and 59th Street already has a line of people awaiting the iPhone 6. Based on several media reports, this line started to form three days ago. For the time being, the group is expected to number in the hundreds before the launch, which would put it at two or three blocks at most. For the iPhone 6 to be an astounding success, the line would need to stretch at least 20 blocks, which is a mile, to somewhere just north of the Empire State Building at 34th Street.

According to BusinessWeek, one of the challenges for people camping out on Fifth is hygiene. It is tough to go to the bathroom or take a shower without losing a prime spot. If the line reaches 20 blocks, bathroom facilities in hotels, shops and public toilets would become overwhelmed. New York City may have to bring in dozens of portable toilets, also known in some circles as “rent a thrones.”

New York City may also need to put hundreds of police in the area to control a crowd that may surge violently when the iPhone 6 actually goes on sale. The Fifth Avenue store is a delicate glass cube, with very limited entry space.

In light of the problem, New York and Apple may need to find another venue for the sale of the iPhone 6. Yankee Stadium and MetLife Stadium, where the Giants play, might be options. At least these venues have experience in crowd control.

The city still has four days to solve the iPhone 6 line problem. However, the crowd may get so large by the weekend that officials will have run out of time.

READ ALSO: An iPhone Screen as Big as a TV Set

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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