Staff Photo by Dan Henry/Chattanooga Times Free Press
Verizon sales associates prepare for the 7 a.m. release of the iPhone 4 while at the Ooltewah Verizon store early Thursday.Verizon’s Chattanooga iPhone launch was slowed by snow and freezing temperatures, though some of the Apple faithful braved the cold to be among the first to get their hands on the iPhone 4, which became widely available Thursday for the first time from a non-AT&T carrier.
A few customers at Verizon’s Cleveland, Tenn., and Gunbarrel Road locations camped out overnight, store employees said, despite the impending snowstorm.
But only a trickle — most of whom waited in their heated vehicles for stores to open — walked inside at 7 a.m. to find that they were outnumbered by employees 5 to 1.
The Gunbarrel Road store saw 25 customers in the first wave, while a dozen braved the cold in Cleveland, according to Chris Humphries, Verizon’s district manager. Nine customers, some of whom decided to purchase non-Apple phones, were greeted at Verizon’s Ooltewah store by 20 employees and hot coffee from Beef ‘O’ Brady’s.
Best Buy, which also opened at 7 a.m., saw fewer than a dozen customers come through the door after the first hour and a half.