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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Doors at the NorthwesTel Inc. Bell retail store in Yellowknife were opened early last Friday morning, as customers eager to have the new iPhone 5 product lined up at the city's electronics dealers to take home the market's newest smartphone on its launch date.

Sadetlo Scott, a retail sales associate at NorthwesTel Inc.'s Bell retail store in Yellowknife, holds up a white iPhone 5 freshly purchased at the store on Friday morning. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

NorthwesTel and Roy's Audio Video Unlimited downtown received stacks of the pricey new devices in white and black boxes the night before the release date, and had the iPhone 5s ready in store, to be purchased by waiting buyers who did not choose to pre-order the devices online.

"From a NorthwesTel retail perspective, it's been awesome that we've been able to provide our customers with this on the launch day," said Tanya Croft, NorthwesTel manager of communications. "There's such a big buzz about this nationally and us being up here it's really critical for us to provide this to our customers.

"It is a little bit tricky to get phones up here in time for the launch date but I think for us it's really important to be able to satisfy our customer base."

Roy's Audio Video had a guarantee from the carrier that the iPhone 5 would be available at the store by launch date, said sales representative Kiel Lukaniuk, who was swept by the excitement of the release at the YK Centre store.

"Everybody's smiling," Lukaniuk said last Friday. "We've had a healthy response already today.

"It's been a fun day, it's been a fun event. We're happy the customers are happy and they're walking away smiling with their new devices."

Lukaniuk attributed the heavy anticipation for the new iPhone to the release of the iPhone 4S following the release of the iPhone 4, when users were expecting a redesigned iPhone 5.

"The step from the 3 to the 4 was a revolutionary one, the 4 to the 4S wasn't as large," he said. "It's the next revolutionary iPhone."

The newest model is sleeker, thinner, and lighter, said NorthwesTel store manager Colin Snow, who listing the upgraded camera, Suri voice control operator system, applications, and new GPS mapping system among the 5's updates.

"With this newest model, Apple has increased the screen size and they've updated pretty much every component in the phone," said Snow. "I think that this phone is the phone that everybody wants."

Longtime Yellowknifer Candice Boylan, one of the many residents who bought the new iPhone the day it was released, said the city's retailers have typically been able to make the latest products available in the North at the same time as the rest of the country.

"Yellowknife's been pretty good at getting things," she said. "I've got the iPad 3, I have a PC and I have a Mac too. I'm just a tech junkie."

Pre-orders for the phones were collected by the retailers to gauge the demand for the products in town.

More iPhone 5s are being ordered by both NorthwesTel and Roy's in anticipation of the quick sell-out of the first orders.

Apple Inc. announced on Monday that it had sold more than five million of its new iPhone 5, just three days after the Sept. 21 launch.

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