Android phone launch day relatively quiet

The first day of sales for Google's Android phone hasn't quite echoed the frenzy surrounding initial iPhone sales, but a few hardy souls across the country got up early to buy the first devices available in stores.

The G1, an HTC phone offered by T-Mobile that is the first to run Google's Android operating system, went on sale on Wednesday at stores across the United States. San Francisco residents had the very first opportunity to buy the phones in person, with one T-Mobile store there opening on Tuesday evening.

[ Take InfoWorld's slideshow tour of the T-Mobile G1 and then read Tom Yager's first look at the iPhone killer. ]

In addition, many people who pre-ordered the G1 started receiving their handsets in the mail on Tuesday.

On the East Coast, five people stood in line in drizzle and 40-degree temperatures to buy G1 phones at the Harvard Square T-Mobile location in Cambridge, Mass. At 8 a.m., the store door opened, and the pre-orderers were quickly ushered inside to be served.

The small crowd was nothing compared with sales of the iPhone 3G in July in nearby downtown Boston, where hundreds of customers waited in line, some of them for several days.

But a T-Mobile manager said he was still pleased with the turnout, which remained fairly steady through the early morning hours. The gloomy skies and sudden colder, rainy weather might have dampered sales, several T-Mobile representatives at the store said.

Jonathan Blood, national director of business development for T-Mobile, said in an interview at the store that there were 200 G1 phones on sale at the Cambridge store, which stands across the street from Harvard University and a few blocks from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Blood said the biggest sales of the G1 apparently occurred at a downtown Boston T-Mobile-owned retail store that sold 20 in the first hour. There are 13 T-Mobile-owned stores in the Boston area, but about 50 retailers, including T-Mobile affiliate stores in the area, were carrying the phone, he said.

T-Mobile shop workers in other stores were more reluctant to talk to reporters. In downtown Manhattan, an employee named Ariel, who declined to give his last name, said there was a line of people waiting outside the store when it opened at 8 a.m., but he did not say how many G1 customers were in it. He noted that people were there not only for the G1, but also "for other things," adding that sometimes there is a line outside the store before opening even on a normal business day.

Ariel said there was a "steady stream" of customers coming into the store to purchase the G1, but declined to say how many the store had sold. At about 11:15 a.m., there were no customers in the store, and salespeople were lined up near the front of the store chatting with one another. T-Mobile already took a considerable amount of preorders for the G1 online, which could account for the lack of customers in the store, he said.