Orange Poland: making you wait

In France, and most other wealthy countries, the arrival of the iPhone 3G in July was highly-anticipated by consumers.  In the US, the lines which formed a week early were a touch fanatical, but the hysteria was only too real on Day 1.  Here in France, the one thing that we didn't need to wait for was the phone selling out.

In Poland, though, public enthusiasm was slightly more muted.  So much so, in fact, that Orange, the local distributor of the iPhone had to take action.  To be sure of having impressive looking lines, the operator hired actors to queue outside its stores.

An Orange spokesman, quoted by Reuters, said, 'we installed twenty of these fake queues at different locations within the country to stimulate interest around the iPhone.'

The idea, it seems, was to spread the news by word-of-mouth, attracting curious customers to come and see the cause of the excitement.

Meanwhile, on the French market, the shortage from the end of July has yet to be totally solved.  At the time of writing, the 16GB version of the iPhone 3G is only available from Orange in white.