Apple fans camp out in Tokyo for iPhone 3G launch on Friday

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Some 30 people lined up on Wednesday in front of Softbank Mobile Corp’s flagship store in Harajuku, two days before the nationwide launch of Apple Inc’s iPhone. The iPhone will go on sale at this store at 7 a.m. on Friday, five hours earlier than any other Softbank store in Japan.

“I am a huge Apple fan and I’m excited to buy the iPhone, which I find is far better than any other cell phone,” said 25-year-old graduate student Hiroyuki Sano who was first in line.

He brought along his MacPro laptop and iPod, as well as a change of clothes, an umbrella, snacks and a folding chair. He even got permission to skip school. “My professor is a big Apple fan, so when I told him I wanted to come line up for the iPhone, he told me to go for it,” Sano said after a fitful night of sleep in his chair. “My mom told me I was crazy.”

The iPhone 3G, which Apple is billing as twice as fast and half as expensive as the debut model, will roll out in cities from Tokyo to Sydney on Friday.

Softbank, Japan’s No. 3 mobile phone company, won the coveted right to sell the new 3G version and will launch nationwide sales at noon Friday, except for the Harajuku store. It will devote Friday, Saturday and Sunday solely to the iPhone, said company spokesman Naoki Nakayama.

Nakayama declined to reveal how many iPhones Softbank expects to sell or how many units it will have on hand at the store. The company is limiting sales to one unit per customer.

When the iPhone 3G goes on sale worldwide Friday, Japan will be among the first countries to have it, following New Zealand and then Australia. Lines are starting to form in other countries as well, with the New Zealand Herald reporting Wednesday about a man who began camping out Tuesday night in an attempt to become the first person in the world to own the latest iPhone.

In Tokyo, Kouichi Funyu, 25, settled into line Wednesday morning around 10 a.m. after hopping on the train from nearby Tochigi prefecture.

“I was relieved,” he said. “I thought there’d be more people.”

The aspiring actor, who sports a mohawk and tattoos and prefers to be called “Butch,” owns other Apple products and described the iPhone as a radical departure from most Japanese handsets.

“I like how they introduced the touch-panel concept to the mobile phone,” he said. “And Apple design is the best.”

But some industry observers have questioned whether Apple can become a significant presence in Japan’s mobile market – one of the biggest and most advanced in the world. While the iPhone offers high-speed web browsing and a button-free touch screen, it lacks functions that have become standard in many Japanese handsets, including mobile terrestrial digital television service and e-money capabilities.

Softbank will subsidize its subscribers’ mobile phone bills for two years, making the cost of the eight-gigabyte iPhone 23,040 yen ($215). The 16-gigabyte version will cost about $320. The iPhone will be sold though Softbank and will not be available at the seven Apple Stores in Japan.

Apple plans to sell its eight-gigabyte iPhone for $199 in the United States and the 16-gigabyte version for $299. The company says it has sold about six million iPhones so far this year and has a goal to sell 10 million.