1,500 iPhone fans to be HK's first owners
Only a small group will get their hands on Apple's new iPhone 3G on Friday. Hutchison Telecom selected 1,500 people to be the first official owners of the mobile device, it was announced yesterday.
Some 500 were randomly chosen from a pool of tens of thousands of people who registered for the product on the internet.
The 500, along with more than 1,000 of Hutchison's premium subscribers, would walk away with the first iPhones on Friday, when 22 markets around the world officially begin selling them, a Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong spokeswoman said.
Only those preselected customers will receive their phones on Friday at a kick-off event at Ocean Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui, the spokeswoman said.
Singh Rajinder, a 31-year-old IT consultant, was told yesterday he was one of the registered people picked to purchase the Apple iPhone on Friday. 'I'm pretty lucky,' said Mr Rajinder. 'I'm usually not one of the lucky ones when it comes to draws.'
Last week, Hutchinson asked all people interested in the device to register online - to help prevent its stores from being swamped by disappointed customers.
Though the company would not reveal the number of iPhones it had, there were not enough phones to satisfy the number of people who signed up, the spokeswoman said.
