If you want to meet a real iPhone tragic, then Merrick Brown is your man.
The 26-year-old Sydney-based consultant has just returned from a five-day, 32,000 km round trip to the east coast of the United States, ostensibly made so that he could be among the first wave to own one of Apple's new mobile phones.
A self-confessed gadget fiend, Brown says he has fixated on the touch-sensitive phone, with an in-built iPod that can also be used to surf the web, ever since it had its first public showing in January.
"I knew I had to get one," he says, proudly showing off his new acquisition. "I'm a bit of an Apple fanatic."
With the launch date set for 6pm last Friday, Brown - who hails from near Boston - booked a ticket, using one of the several trips home a year he is entitled to under his contract.
Although he also had to return to renew his driver's licence and catch up with his family, the visit was scheduled around the iPhone launch date.
His plans was to buy the phone at an outlet near JFK International Airport in New York.
To maximise his chances of getting one and minimise the amount of time he would have to queue, Brown searched online before he left for a store located in the neighbourhood with the lowest median income within a 18km radius of the airport.
In the end, his mother offered to find a spot in a queue close to where she lives near Boston and bought the phone for her son and one for herself.
While it sounds obsessive, Brown is not alone in his infatuation with the gadget that bloggers have dubbed the Jesusphone.
Analysts in the US estimate that Apple and its phone company partner AT&T may have sold over 700,000 iPhones last weekend. And 95 of Apple's 164 stores and many of the AT&T outlets around the country are reported to have sold out.
The device, which comes in two models priced at $US499 ($580) and $US599 ($700), is only sold in the US where it can only be used on AT&T's mobile phone network.
Apple plans to launch the phone in Europe later this year and in Australia in 2008, and will almost certainly strike exclusive deals with one carrier in each country where the iPhone is sold.
But many gadget fans living outside the US are not prepared to wait - even though it means their expensive toy may not operate as its maker intended it.
"In some ways it's cool to be among the first to have it," Brown says. "The flipside of that is that people look at you as if you are a little crazy as you just spent $US600 to get a phone that doesn't work as a phone."
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