The retail stores of Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) garnered long lines of shoppers today when the company’s latest iPhone releases went on sale this morning. Such an incredible turnout indicates a strong demand for the larger screens of the smartphone.

The iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus debuted today in Japan, France, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Customers in San Francisco and New York already began to form lines two days ago in an effort to be one of the first lucky people to purchase the device.

At the company’s Fifth Avenue location in New York, officers from the New York Police Department erected barricades as the line of shoppers stretched for more than ten blocks, and the crowd cheered consistently for the fifteen minutes prior to the phones officially going on sale.

The tech company’s lineup of iPhones is the most important event this year for Apple. The company’s chief executive officer Tim Cook is depending on the smartphones to maintain and boost Apple’s growth in sales. The company’s iPhone sales bring in more than fifty percent of the company’s annual revenue, which came out to be $171 billion last year.

The new iPhones feature a display screen that measures 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, which is significantly larger than the 4 inch display screens of older models. This increase in size will help Apple attract new customers.

Carrier’s Supply

The key question that analysts have about Apple during this first weekend is whether or not the company will have enough inventory to meet the incredible demand for its products.

Some carriers of the iPhone in Manhattan were already selling out of limited supplies of the iPhone 6 Plus earlier this morning. At 8:30 a.m. a Sprint store located at 42^nd Street were sold out, and the AT&T store on 46^th Street and Madison Avenue reported that they were sold out of the iPhone 6 Plus.

A T-Mobile store reported that all but one iPhone was sold out at 8:45 a.m. A spokeswoman for the store stated that they are expected to restock their supply later today.

London

It was estimated that more than 1,000 people were waiting in line in front of Apple’s Regent Street store, located in London. Some customers resorted to sitting on pieces of cardboard to stay dry after it had rained the night before.

Portland

The Apple store in downtown Portland, Oregon saw a line of hundreds of people outside the Apple store, which snaked around the block, then down another street where it extended for three more blocks.

Hong Kong

At the Apple store in Hong Kong, hundreds of shoppers formed a line at the retail store in the IFC mall to get their new iPhones after purchasing and registering online in advance. There were also about a dozen protesters from the Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior activist group, who protested against the practices that Apple used to manufacture their smartphones.

While Apple has not announced when the iPhone 6 will be released in markets in China, many Chinese nationals traveled from Mainland China to Hong Kong in order to obtain the devices. Many were disappointed after they were denied the ability to register online.

Japan

The Apple store in Shibuya, Tokyo already had a count of 600 people in line about an hour before the store opened. The store located in Omotesando nearby had roughly 1,000.

According to Walter Piecky, an analyst at BTIG LLC, the most important part of the opening weekend for iPhone sales are the huge lines and the record breaking sales numbers that will generate much needed free press for the company.

Record Pre-Orders

The hype about the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus has been buzzing ever since Tim Cook revealed them at the media event on September 9^th. When the iPhones became available for pre-order last week, they garnered a record breaking 4 million reservations in the first 24 hours, a figure that beat out prior releases. According to a number of resellers, users are trading in their older phones in order to get the new iPhone. Some iPhone 6’s are being sold on the black market in Hong Kong for $3,600.

According to RBC Capital Markets, a recent survey of 6,000 consumers discovered that 26 percent who intended to purchase one of the new iPhones are new customers, meaning that there is a considerable influx of new customers to Apple’s ecosystem. The majority of these new customers are switching from phones that used Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Android operating system.

Adoption Rate

According to Carl Howe, an analyst at 451 Research LLC, Apple may be able to sell 12 to 15 million units of the new iPhones this weekend. On the other hand, Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst from Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. said that he predicts that Apple will hit sales between 7 million to 8 million units, which is less than last year’s opening weekend sales for the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c, which totaled to 9 million. The main reason for this conservative estimate is that China is not one of the first countries that will sell the device on opening weekend.

Apple did not release the new iPhone in China on the first weekend, while it did do so last year with the iPhone 5 line. China is one of the biggest developing markets of smartphone customers. The subscriber base for China Mobile Ltd alone stands at 794 million.

The adoption rate of Apple’s new iOS mobile operating system, which was released on September 17^th, was about 7.3 percent during the first 24 hours, which was not as quick as it had in 2013 last year. The adoption rate this year fell short of the 18 percent adoption rate last year for the iOS 7, and the 15 percent for the iOS 6 two years ago.

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