Ninety minutes after entering the Regent Street Apple Store at 8.00am this morning, the first person in the queue for the iPhone 3G still hadn’t managed to buy one. Apparently, the O2 activation server crashed shortly after the doors opened at iPhone stockists around the country, which means no one in the UK was able to buy an iPhone 3G.

The activation delays follow problems earlier in the week with O2's 'server meltdown' as customers tried to pre-order the iPhone 3G online ,and its subsequent requests to some customers for emailed scans of passports for 'identity checks'.

We spoke to people number #2 and #3 in the London Apple Store queue as they left the store after waiting for ninety minutes for their iPhones – after the cut.

We were at the Apple Store when the doors opened and filmed the (mostly) eager rush of people. Then we waited. And waited. Changes in the iPhone purchase procedure mean that you need to sign up for an O2 account and activate the iPhone before you actually buy it, but even this didn’t account for the lengthy wait for anyone to walk out of the store with an iPhone 3G.

One of the Apple Store told us that there were just ten people handling iPhone 3G activations and that the process was taking about 45 minutes per customer. Just a few minutes later, we were told that the O2 activation gateway had crashed, which meant even longer delays for the eager buyers.

At 9.30am, the crowd of journalists waiting outside the store had dwindled to a mere handful in the absence of successful iPhone 3G buyers. We were just about to give up and come back to the office when two people who were at the head of the queue walked out of the store. They had been waiting for 90 minutes to activate their iPhone 3Gs before purchase, but got tired of waiting.

Oh and it appears that Apple Store staff were accessing the O2 activation service using Internet Explorer on their Macs. Coincidence..?

Hopefully by now (10.30am) some customers have emerged with an iPhone 3G, but we wouldn’t bet on it…

Update: We wish we'd thought of this Daily Mail headline about the situation: "Fury as iPhone customers forced to wait hours for mobiles after computer meltdown ". Sadly, we didn't, probably because we didn't see any 'furious' customers as we stood next to the photographer that took those photos. And "Annoyance as iPhone customers..." doesn't make the same exciting copy, of course...

Fury as iPhone customers forced to wait hours for mobiles after computer meltdown

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