The corner of 5th Ave. and 58th Street. Photo: PED
FORTUNE — Dawn had broken by the time I made it to Apple’s (AAPL) flagship Fifth Avenue store Friday morning. The barricades were already in place, and the crowd of would-be customers had filled Apple Plaza and circled the block.
I started a head count at 7:00 a.m. and 10 minutes later reached 1,068 at the end of the line, half-way up 58th Street.
That’s 50% more than the 710 I counted at the same time last year for the iPhone 5 launch, which itself was 52% higher than the line for the 4S.
I’ll do another count just before the 8 a.m. launch.
Photo: PED
Final pre-launch line count as of 7:53: 1,213, with new customers joining the queue at the rate of about 15 per minute.
Everybody I asked was there to buy the iPhone 5S. Anybody who wanted a 5C , of course, could order it online.
By 8:45, when I went back to see how much the crowd had grown, the line was snaking up 5th Ave. and the count had swelled to 1,410.
See Video: Walking the iPhone 5C/S line at Apple’s Fifth Ave. store
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster’s posted a similar count: 1,417 at the big glass cube plus another 405 at Apple’s Upper West Side store.
Here, for reference purposes, is Munster’s updated line-count chart.
