By Katie Marsal
Published: 12:00 PM EST
T-Mobile, the mobile services arm of Deutsche Telekom, said Friday it has sold more than 10,000 iPhones on the first day the touch-screen handsets were made available in Germany.
The iPhones were purchased via the company's retail stores and over the Web, T- Mobile said, adding that it is "well prepared" to meet further high demand.
Speaking in a television interview Thursday, company's chief executive Rene Obermann said it's possible demand in Germany for iPhones during the Christmas sales season
may outstrip supply.
T-Mobile's upbeat comments arrive in stark contrast to
observations published Friday by media outlet
Reuters, which insinuated that the German launch was lackluster at best.
While a few hundred "hardcore fans"
lined up at a Deutsche Telekom retail store in Cologne, Germans in downtown Frankfurt reportedly lived up to their reputation for thrift and resistance to hype.
Outside the T-Mobile store on Frankfurt's main shopping street, people hurried to work without noticing the placards outside the shop proclaiming the iPhone's arrival, according to
Reuters.
"Really? No, I had no idea," said one woman, declining to stop to give her name when asked whether she was aware the iPhone went on sale on Friday.
iPhone launches in Germany.
Shoppers in Cologne pack a Deutsche Telekom retail store.
Meanwhile, one solitary would-be buyer loitered outside the shop an hour and a half before opening time.
"I'm astonished there's no one else here," said 34-year-old Uwe Berger, a computer programmer who fell in love with the iPhone on a recent visit to the United States.
"I don't find the price too high. The iPhone can do more than other phones and of course it's much better."
