Riot police turn on 3,000 strong crowd as phone launch goes wrong

Not an iPhone in sight

Riot police turn on 3,000 strong crowd as phone launch goes wrong. Phones, RIM, BlackBerry, BlackBerry Bold 9790 0

25 November 2011 14:20 GMT / By Stuart Miles

It is every company’s dream to have thousands turn up to the launch of a new phone, but not this one: it saw calm queuers go "crazy" when stock quickly ran out.

So many people turned up for the latest smartphone launch in Jakarta, Indonesia, that hundreds of police had to be called in to calm the situation down.

But the new phone isn’t from Apple, but RIM.

Its latest smartphone, the BlackBerry Bold 9790, announced earlier this month has just gone on sale in the country.

"With a 50 per cent discount on the 540 US dollar (£349) smartphone for the first 1,000 buyers, queues started forming in front of the Pacific Place shopping centre on Thursday night. By daybreak, impatient shoppers started rattling the gates," reports the Press Association on the carnage that ensued.

However, when word that the new phone had sold out, the crowd of 3,000 - beat that Apple - went "crazy".

"Several people fainted in the crush," reports the news agency.

To put it in perspective, Apple’s latest phone launch in the UK saw around 800 people in the queue at its Covent Garden store in the UK. Thankfully for that one though, the police didn’t have to get involved.

- BlackBerry Bold 9790: The new thinner Bold

- BlackBerry Bold 9790 pictures and hands-on

Via: uk.news.yahoo.com

Full tags

Phones, RIM, BlackBerry, BlackBerry Bold