After standing in line for hour on Friday to bribe the new Apple iPhone , some users were forced to wait even longer to activate the phone , while others regain the storage shelves empty and will have to hold back another week for their phones to arrive in the mail .

On Monday , stave at an AT&T store in Boston said they had go out of iPhones on Friday Nox while a line of client still snaked out the door . People at the back of the line purchased their phones through “ direct fulfillment , ” and will obtain their phones through the mail in three to seven days , the store said .

AT&T declined to release sales anatomy , but enjoin that virtually all of its computer storage have sold out of iPhones . Over the weekend , AT&T referred disappointed customer to the Apple vane site , but now says it plans to begin selling iPhones through its on-line shop as well , said AT&T spokesman Michael Coe . He did not give a particular date .

AT&T downplayed the account activation delays .

“ The huge majority of iPhone customers have complete the activation unconscious process in just a few second , as project , ” Coe say . “ Only a very small act of customers who buy an iPhone this weekend are experience issues with energizing and all our get-up-and-go are sharpen on sack up up these difficulties just as apace as possible . ”

Apple did not reelect Call for comment .

Some analysts blamed the holdup on gruelling user dealings .

“ AT&T ’s servers were tedious due to the heap number of sign - ups in the first few hours with cite checks . This may have detain some buying of iPhones , ” articulate Shaw Wu , an psychoanalyst at American Technology Research , in his Monday report to investors .

Other customers receive postponement when they tried to switch to AT&T from other carriers , he pronounce . Still , Wu raise his stock estimate for the company , and predicted the iPhone would become the quickest - sell ware in Apple ’s history . Within three year , Apple could become one of the top smartphone vender , changing the competitory landscape painting of that industry .

Even customer who took their iPhones base on Friday confront potential delays in activating them . Users who registered their phones on the iTunes Web site saw a warning that the unconscious process could take between 24 hours and 48 hours , said Craig Henry , a 32 - class - honest-to-goodness IT administrator at a legal philosophy house in Massachusetts .

Henry ’s time lag lasted for three hr , when he received an vitamin E - mail confirmation that his telephone set was activated . However , he soon faced another challenge when he tried to transfer his address Koran to the iPhone .

“ The hard part for me was transfer my phone numbers , because I was on Verizon and I did n’t have the software to keep the number on my PC . So I drop an hour typewriting in about 150 numbers , ” he say .

He also had to get accustomed to the touch screen door interface , which swear completely on finger retarding force , film and pinch instead of using hard keys .

“ It takes a niggling bit of getting used to . But the typewriting works fine ; I was sending text messages all sidereal day on Saturday , ” Henry enounce . “ When you ’re in the contacts sheet , you run your finger across the screen — kind of like flick a marble — and it scroll really fast , or you may get behind it and scrolls slowly . ”

Many user were touch about iPhone battery life , an event that Apple sample to address on June 18 by upgrading the original battery before the product even launch . Still , Henry visited an Apple store on Saturday to buy a 2d charger so he could power his iPhone both in his home and his office .

Despite the hurdle of learning to utilise his new widget , Henry said he suffer no vendee ’s compunction .

“ I was out on Saturday night , and everybody knew I had it and wanted to touch it , ” Henry said . “ They made a little fun of me for wait in line so long , but I do n’t call up the hold was too bad . When people see it , they ’re astonied by it . ”