The invitation to the press event on April 4 said “Come see our new home on Android,” and since Facebook likely wouldn’t have an entire press conference just to announce a new app for the Google operating system, expectations turned to something more: namely, the much-hyped Facebook phone. According to TechCrunch, the launch will see the social network introduce a device from HTC that runs a modified version of the Android operating system and has Facebook’s newsfeed, photo uploading, messaging and other features integrated into it.

Next to a full-fledged Apple TV, the “Facebook phone” is probably one of the longest-running rumors in the technology space. The first reports started filtering out over three years ago, when Om and others heard reports of an INQ unit that would run a modified version of Android and offer some kind of integrated Facebook functionality. The company released a device called the CloudTouch in 2011 but it went nowhere. HTC actually came out with a couple of phones that offered something similar, but neither did well, and the rumor mill continued to foretell the coming of the *real* Facebook phone.

Owning the platform would provide more control

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg categorically denied that the company was working on a phone last fall, but some saw wiggle room in his comments, since he seemed to be talking about Facebook actually building the hardware itself. Blogger-turned-VC MG Siegler wrote about the imminent launch of true Facebook phone in January, and said that it was coming soon. But January came and went with no phone. Siegler says he now believes that the phone is coming next week, and that it will be everything he said it would be: a dedicated device running a version of Android with Facebook built in.

As much as some critics of the idea — including our own mobile expert Kevin Fitchard, who debated the idea with Kevin Tofel — question whether there is any point to Facebook releasing its own phone, it’s worth noting that the same kind of scepticism greeted the many reports about an Apple phone in the months and years leading up to the launch of the first iPhone. Too risky, many industry analysts said — no point in trying to enter a crowded market with commodity pricing, nothing to offer that would make it better than the existing players, etc.

Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg won’t be happy until he releases a phone and tries to break Apple’s grip on the smartphone industry. But it’s more likely the Facebook founder’s interest in a phone stems from a desire to capture users — and their all-important data — in as many different ways as possible. Zuckerberg has already stated that his interests are almost entirely focused on mobile, since that is where a growing amount of user activity is coming from. Owning the platform in some sense would just make it easier to offer a user a one-stop experience.

At the moment, Facebook has a somewhat fragmented approach to the phone: there is the main Facebook app, but there’s also the Instagram app — which the social network acquired for close to $1 billion because it saw the photo-sharing community as a clear and present danger — and the standalone Facebook messenger app, and its Poke app. The company seems to be trying to find as many entry points for users as possible to engage with the network, and a phone with more integration could help.

But does anyone actually want one?

Owning a platform is the ultimate step in building a mobile walled garden: Apple is the obvious role model here, with its ownership of the app ecosystem and control over access to the device in every way, all of which has created hundreds of billions of dollars in market value. And both Google and Amazon are doing their best to own their own ecosystems, with Android and the Kindle platform — and even Microsoft has given it the old college try with the Windows phone. Facebook at this point is probably feeling left out by having to play ball with everyone else’s OS or device.

So Facebook’s interest in having such a device is fairly obvious. What’s less obvious is whether a large enough group of the social network’s users would be interested in having one. What would they gain? They can already have Facebook present on their home screen, and they can upload photos to it automatically in the background as they take them, and they can use Facebook’s messaging app instead of the texting feature in their phone — although increasing numbers of young users seem to be opting for SnapChat and other options.

In many ways, the release of a Facebook-branded phone — if that is in fact what the company has in mind for next week — seems more like a desperate move to recapture some of the relevance the social network used to have, especially with younger mobile users. Unfortunately for Facebook, that may be something that is beyond its abilities, no matter how impressive the device itself is.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock / D. Hammond

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On the positive side, a number of those watching either live or on a livestream said that BlackBerry had caught up and possibly even surpassed other platforms like Apple’s iOS, Android and Windows 8, and that the company had a fighting chance of remaining relevant:

I am actually genuinely excited about BlackBerry 10. It looks like it has potential.

—
Tom Warren (@tomwarren) January 30, 2013

.@Pogue on the BlackBerry Z10: "It's lovely, fast and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas" nyti.ms/WBgM4j

—
The New York Times (@nytimes) January 30, 2013

#BB10 definitely meets needs for launch. Momentum, execution and of course perception will be key.

—
Michael Gartenberg (@Gartenberg) January 30, 2013

I said it before and I'll say it again: If RIM/Blackberry is indeed on its last legs, it's going to go down swinging.

—
Arik Hesseldahl (@ahess247) January 30, 2013

At least one enthusiastic BlackBerry supporter even went so far as to say that Steve Jobs would be jealous of what the company had announced:

Can someone check Steve Jobs' grave? This #BlackBerry10 is looking like a major threat to $AAPL. Steve might be spinning right now.

—
Michael Hainsworth (@hainsworthtv) January 30, 2013

But there were just as many — or more — responses that criticized BlackBerry for being late to the party, and for only now coming up with the kinds of features and apps that iPhone and even Android have had for some time. CNN Money said that the Z10 was the kind of phone BlackBerry “should have made years ago” and that while there were some good ideas in it, “Everything still feels a generation behind.”

BB10 pitch so far: "You like Instagram? FaceTime? That Apple collage-maker thing? We have stuff like that now!"

—
Omar El Akkad (@omarelakkad) January 30, 2013

Breaking news: The Titanic has just been renamed Blackberry

—
Cathleen Ritt (@CathleenRitt) January 30, 2013

congratulations blackberry on creating an operating system that is competitive with Palm OS

—
Ed Zitron (@edzitron) January 30, 2013

RIM will announce today that they’re almost feature parity to 2010 with other major smartphone platforms.

—
Glenn Fleishman (@GlennF) January 30, 2013

You've had exodus of millions of Blackberry users to iOS/Android now. To think that a clone touchscreen will save you is business insanity.

—
Shervin Pishevar (@shervin) January 30, 2013

In his review, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and All Things Digital said that the company had “reinvented itself” with its new devices, but also called it a “work in progress” and noted that the new phones lacked some of the features — and many of the apps — that users of other platforms were used to:

“Overall, it worked fine in my tests, but I found it a work in progress. I liked some things a lot, including the way RIM has designed its new virtual keyboard and camera, and the way it gathers all your messages into a single Hub. But it will launch with just a fraction of the apps available from its competitors, and is missing some very popular titles…. and there are other missing or lagging features.”

One of the early awkward notes in the presentation — at least for some attendees and observers — was a public thank-you from CEO Thorsten Heins to former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis:

"Thank you for guiding us in the future" says RIM's CEO to the ex-co-CEO that drove it into the ground. live.theverge.com/blackberry-10-… #BlackBerry10

—
Ross Miller (@ohnorosco) January 30, 2013

Only RIM would salute the two gentlemen who put the company in a desperate hole at the event designed to get out of that hole.

—
Tom Krazit (@tomkrazit) January 30, 2013

The renaming of the company sparked some positive comments, but also drew a lot of snarky responses about how no one really knew what Research In Motion stood for anyway — and also a comment about how much pressure the name change puts on the company to succeed with the BlackBerry revamp:

Research in Motion has renamed itself Blackberry. Everyone outside Waterloo: "You mean Blackberry isn't their name?"

—
David J. MacKay (@DavidJMacKay) January 30, 2013

So the guys who joked that RIM would die before it launched BlackBerry 10 were technically accurate.

—
Vlad Savov (@vladsavov) January 30, 2013

RIM is now just BlackBerry. Less confusing! Also a reminder if the new phones don't work the company is dead. They have nothing else.

—
John Herrman (@jwherrman) January 30, 2013

The RIM rebranding news is arguably a bigger deal than either individual device.

—
nilay patel (@reckless) January 30, 2013

Funny, when Apple Computer -> Apple, it signaled a broadening of focus/products. RIM -> BlackBerry doesn't quite make the same statement.

—
Jeremy Horwitz (@horwitz) January 30, 2013

Then it was on to the details of the two handsets, the Z10 and the Q10 — the former a touchscreen model and the latter featuring a QWERTY keyboard, which has been BlackBerry’s key differentiator from other smartphones for some time. After some talk about the hardware design, the company went into details about what apps would be available, and there was some optimism but also much skepticism:

@kady @thehartley Yes, whatever will we do without 457 flashlight apps?

—
Anthony Reinhart (@ajreinhart) January 30, 2013

…..Who the hell requires you to reboot your device when you install apps?

—
Armando Rodriguez (@megapenguinx) January 30, 2013

BB10 has 70,000 apps to choose from at launch. About one-tenth what you'll find on Apple/Android.

—
Omar El Akkad (@omarelakkad) January 30, 2013

Fun seeing BlackBerry users discover video chat seemingly for the first time. FaceTime, Google Talk and Skype would like to say hi!

—
Jon Fingas (@jonfingas) January 30, 2013

In a mammoth review of the touch-screen Z10, Joshua Topolsky of The Verge said that there were many things to like about it, but lots of things not to like as well — and the bottom line seemed to be a definite “meh”:

“The Z10 is a good smartphone. Frankly, it’s a better smartphone than I expected from RIM at this stage in the game. It does everything a modern phone should do, usually without hesitation. It doesn’t do everything perfectly, but it does many things — most things — reasonably well. The problem with the Z10 is that it doesn’t necessarily do anything better than any of its competition.”

Towards the end of the presentation, the BlackBerry CEO announced that singer Alicia Keys would be the company’s new “global creative director,” and like most of the other announcements by the company at the launch, this also drew a lot of snark:

Everything about this #BB10 keynote impressed me, up until the point where they jumped on the Celebrity Executive Announcement trend. Sigh.

—
Jon Crowley (@joncrowley) January 30, 2013

Because the celebrity creative director thing worked out so well for Polaroid and @ladygaga.

—
  (@joemfbrown) January 30, 2013

Appropriate Blackberry pick Alicia Keys. She was last relevant what seems like a lifetime ago too...

—
Luke McGee (@lukemcgee85) January 30, 2013

BlackBerry announces Alicia Keyes as its new "global creative director." I am really not sure what that means.

—
  (@Dan_Rowinski) January 30, 2013

So does the BlackBerry 10 launch mark the rebirth of a revitalized company, ready to take on Apple, Android and Windows for smartphone supremacy? It’s probably safe to say that view would be in the minority — and the most common response was a virtual shrug:

I give #Blackberry10 a solid meh.

—
Romit Mehta (@TheRomit) January 30, 2013

It’s still early days, of course, but that’s not a great harbinger of success for the company, which has so much riding on a recovery — and perhaps even more important, the stock market seemed to be shrugging its shoulders (or even frowning) at the announcement as well:

In his review of the Z10, New York Times technology writer David Pogue apologized for saying RIM was dead before, but still wound up sitting on the fence about whether the device would be enough to save the company:

“These days, excellence in a smartphone isn’t enough. Microsoft’s phone is terrific, too, and hardly anyone will touch it. So then: Is the delightful BlackBerry Z10 enough to save its company? Honestly? It could go either way. But this much is clear: BlackBerry is no longer an incompetent mess — and its doom is no longer assured.”

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On June 4, 2010, Matt Desch, CEO of satellite communications company Iridium, sat in his McLean, Va., office staring into a computer screen at a live video feed of a 368-ton rocket idling on a launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The telecom veteran had staked Iridium’s future on a $3 billion plan to bring the company’s aging constellation of satellites into the 21st century. A key part of that plan was getting 72 next-generation satellites into orbit, and it was this rocket, now preparing for its maiden flight, that would eventually carry Iridium’s precious cargo into space.

In selecting a company to launch his satellites, Desch hadn’t opted for a tried-and-true aerospace player like Arianespace or International Launch Services. Instead, he had decided to go with the upstart Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX. Why? SpaceX had offered to launch the six-dozen satellites for half what the established players were charging, saving Iridium half-a-billion dollars.

Matt Desch

But the decision carried a huge amount of risk. While SpaceX’s entrepreneur-founder Elon Musk was already well known for his ambitious goal of privatizing space travel, his company at the time had had more failures than successes. Its previous-model rocket, the Falcon 1,misfired on each of its first three launches: the first caught fire, the engine on the second died, and on its third launch, the rocket’s two stages collided. Those failures sent the company teetering toward toward death, saved only by the Falcon 1′s fourth, successful, launch.

Now, Desch and Iridium were about to see whether SpaceX’s newest rocket, the Falcon 9, was more reliable than its predecessor — and the months leading up to June 4 hadn’t been very reassuring. The rocket was supposed to have embarked on its first flight in November of the previous year, but that launch had been postponed 10 separate times.

The rocket had finally reached the pad, but as Desch watched from his office, there had already been one false start, the launch aborted due to an errant sensor reading. If SpaceX couldn’t light the fuse by 3 PM, the mission would have to be rescheduled once again.

Another string of failures could endanger Iridium’s exacting launch schedule, or worse, send SpaceX spiraling into bankruptcy and Iridium scrambling to find another launch provider. The biggest concern, though, was the reaction of Iridiums’s bankers. Desch had negotiated a $492 millon contract with SpaceX — the largest commercial launch contract in history – but because of SpaceX’s track record, the consortium of European banks underwriting the whole project wanted to see a successful launch of the Falcon 9 before they put pen to paper.

As Desch put it: “Bankers don’t like to see explosions.”

Fifteen minutes before the launch window closed, the Falcon 9′s first-stage engines ignited and the rocket lifted off. Six minutes later it achieved its target altitude and placed a dummy capsule in orbit 155 miles above the Earth. The normally stoic Desch let out a cheer of elation. Outside his office his employees celebrated — high fives all around.

A week later, Desch was in Paris hamming it up with the bankers, and true to their word, the financiers signed off on the contract. When Musk attended Iridium’s investor conference in New Orleans later that year he was treated like a superhero — it was like “having Tony Stark, a real-life Iron Man” in the room, Desch said.

Elon Musk

The following is the never-before-told story of how Iridium placed a huge bet on SpaceX that wound up paying off. In a series of interviews, Desch shared with GigaOM the details about how a satellite communications company struggling with its future found common cause with a scrappy startup that wanted to broaden the frontiers of space exploration.

Iridium didn’t need SpaceX to survive, but by placing its faith its Elon Musk’s company it found a way to overhaul one of the largest satellite constellations in the heavens on a shoestring budget — and trade up its old voice-centric business model for one focused on data. In exchange, SpaceX got the major contract it needed to firmly establish itself as a powerhouse in commercial space flight.

A mobile network hurtling through space at 17,000 mph

Iridium was born out of the satellite communications boom of the late 1990s, riding a wave of speculation that satellite players like itself, Globalstar and Orbcomm could build a truly global mobile network for the monied classes. Backed heavily by Motorola, it activated its constellation in November 1999 and began selling its first bulky satellite phones around the world. Nine months later it filed for bankruptcy,

At that point it was clear that satellite telephony wasn’t going to even compete with cellular, much less replace it. There was a good chance that Iridium’s $5 billion to $6 billion network would have been decommissioned entirely, letting the satellites fall out of orbit and burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, creating one of the most spectacular pyrotechnics display the world has every seen. But at the last minute, a consortium of investors bought Iridium’s extraterrestrial assets for pennies on the dollar and restarted satellite phone service in 2001 with much more modest ambitions.

Iridium isn’t your typical satellite communications company. It’s not tossing a few satellites into orbit that are hovering at fixed points above specific continents. Instead, it operates a constellation of 66 birds that cover the entirety of the Earth’s surface from pole to pole. Each satellite travels at an orbital velocity of 17,000 mph on dispersed planes that intersect on the Earth’s axis, meaning no matter where you’re standing – or floating — on the surface of the earth, you’re in view of multiple Iridium satellites.

That kind of network may not be useful to your typical consumer or business user, but it’s extremely attractive to a certain set of professionals – military, international contractors, merchant marines, field scientists and surveyors – that travel to the far corners of the globe.

When Desch took over as CEO in 2006, Iridium had cemented a close relationship with the U.S. Department of Defense, and was expanding into the private sector. He took the company public, made it a profitable venture, and expanded the company’s portfolio to include data and machine-to-machine services communications (for companies or organizations that want to keep track of their assets even when they are in the middle of the ocean or in the remotest jungle). Desch has doubled Iridium’s subscribers to 576,000 in six years, according to the company’s last earnings report.

Iridium has some big accounts like FedEx and UPS but many of its customers are smaller outfits. Iridium satellites track dog sleds as they race across Alaska in the Iditarod, and they provide crucial communications for the relief workers of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in war-torn and diaster-stricken regions of the world.

Desch said Iridium no longer has any interest in challenging the mobile carrier powers or moving beyond basic voice and data connectivity. “I hate to use the term dumb pipe,” he said. “It has such negative connotations. But I have no problem with the term because no one can supply the kind of dumb pipe we can.”

A fascination with anything that flies 

Desch started his career at Bell Labs 30 years ago, and since then he’s made the rounds through the telecom industry. He was president of the now defunct Nortel Networks’ wireless division, where he oversaw the construction of some of the  world’s biggest 2G networks. In 2002, he was tapped to become CEO of Telcordia, the former research arm of the regional Bell phone companies. He sits on President Obama’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and has either chaired or sat on the boards of pretty much every U.S. telecom industry trade and standards organization.

An Iridium Flare over upstate New York

Desch grew up during the Apollo Moon flights, and has always been fascinated by anything that flies. Though he’s never left the troposphere, he pilots his single-engine Cessna T210 several times a month. When discussing Iridium, Desch never fails to mention that the satellite constellation has become an object of obsession among star gazers. All of Iridium’s satellites have flat, door-sized, highly-reflective antennas. When those antennas catch the sun’s rays just right they produce a “flare” 3o times brighter than Venus in the night sky.

When Desch accepted his new role at Iridium, he was almost immediately handed a huge task: to replace Iridium’s aging constellation with a new generations of satellites. It’s current network is already well past its anticipated operational lifespan of seven to 10 years, and several satellites have already malfunctioned or have tumbled back into the atmosphere. Iridium 33 was decommissioned in a more dramatic fashion in 2009 when it collided over Siberia with a defunct Russian communications satellite at 22,000 mph.

Iridium replaced those defunct or lost satellites with in-orbit spares, and Desch said that the company could keep the current fleet going until 2017 when it hopes to complete its replacement. But there is definitely a sense of urgency. Iridium may be able to squeeze some more operational life out of its satellites, but it doesn’t change the fact they’re already obsolete.

In the last 10 years, mobile communications has shifted its focus from voice to mobile broadband. Satellite broadband technology has made huge leaps. ViaSat in October put into orbit a satellite with a total network capacity of 140 Gbps, allowing it to offer speeds up to 12 Mbps to customers on the ground. Iridium’s closest competitor Globalstar, which runs a constellation of 40 satellites, is already one-third of the way through its next-generation satellite deployment. Globalstar’s orbiters only support speeds of 256 kbps, but even those sub-broadband connections put Iridium at a significant disadvantage.

Iridium’s network can only support a 10 kbps earth-to-orbit connection, which is pretty much the speed of a 1990 dial-up modem. That might be fine for downloading email without attachments from an ocean-bound oil tanker or sending out the GPS coordinates of a polar expedition. But in an age of multi-megabit connections to smartphones, those speeds just don’t cut it.

Desch’s big bet

Between 2015 and 2017, Iridium plans to replace every single one of its 66 current satellites with new Thales Alenia-built orbiters, and also throw up six spares. Called Iridium Next, the constellation will boast device connection of speeds of well over 1 Mbps to mobile devices and 8 Mbps to dish antennas, and will significantly boost the capacity of the overall satellite grid. When the constellation is complete, Desch said, Iridium will be the only communications company in the world that can deliver a megabit or more of a bandwidth to any point on the globe.

To get such a huge payload into low-Earth orbit, Desch didn’t just need a launch provider to supply multiple rockets, he needed one that could reliably send those rockets into space every few months starting in 2015. Once Iridium puts its first batch of satellites into orbit, the others need to go up in rapid succession.

Iridium’s satellites aren’t just bouncing signals back down to the Earth’s surface. They’re inter-networked. They’re passing calls among one another in a cosmic game of hot potato until one of those satellites flies over one of four ground stations where it finally connects the call to the terrestrial network.

Having a 1 Mbps connection to a new satellite does little good if the satellite completing the chain can only support dial-up speeds. So Iridium Next won’t be open for business until the full complement of 66 new satellites is in orbit.

Finally, Iridium had to buy those launches on the cheap, according to mobile satellite services analyst Tim Farrar. The original Iridium constellation in 1999 was a multi-billion-dollar debacle. So Iridium is determined to get its next-generation network up on a $3 billion budget, Farrar said.

“Iridium really had to go with SpaceX, because more established players have found their launch services in heavy demand in recent years and so have been raising prices,” Farrar said.

For $492 million, SpaceX would deliver eight launches, while any other rocket supplier would have charged $1 billion for the same services, Desch said. But Iridium also hedged its bets. It contracted with ISC Kosmotras – a launch consortium between Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan — to serve as a second launch provider and as a backup in case SpaceX is delayed.

Still, it wasn’t an easy decision, Desch said. Iridium first started negotiating with SpaceX in 2006, when its rockets started falling out of the sky. It wouldn’t matter how much of a deal SpaceX cut if it couldn’t deliver a reliable launch vehicle or ceased operations.

“Our view was always that SpaceX was going to be successful,” Desch said. “What we weren’t sure about was when they would be successful.” Iridium had some leeway since its first launch wasn’t scheduled until 2015, but it couldn’t push its launch date out much further. At that point Iridium’s old orbiters would be 15 years old, long past their original expiration dates. It needed to get the new birds up but before the old ones start failing en masse.

Iridium is by no means Space X’s most important customer — that would be NASA. Nor is Iridium SpaceX’s first commercial satellite customer. But the size and scope of the Iridium deal were key to establishing the fledgling aerospace company as a heavyweight in the commercial launch industry, said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who led negotiations with the satellite operator.

Gwynne Shotwell

“We definitely knew the significance of that deal,” Shotwell said. “It was the largest commercial launch contract at the time. No one else has ordered six or seven launches. … It’s helped us out in every deal we’ve gotten since.”

Houston, do we have a problem?

Earlier this month, Iridium revealed in its second-quarter earnings call that it was canceling its first Falcon 9 launch, and had decided to go with backup ICS Kosmotras for its first flight. Desch said there were no problems or delays; rather Iridium was just minimizing costs. By packing 10, rather than nine, satellites onto each SpaceX rocket, Iridium says it can reduce the number of launches from eight to seven, saving an estimated $15 million. But Desch added that Iridium also wanted to buy SpaceX more time.

“It’s a smarter strategy for in-orbit testing and provides us some additional cost savings,” Desch said. “It also gives SpaceX a little more time to get through the two dozen or so launches that are on their manifest before Iridium Next.”

Ironically, the greatest risk to Iridium now isn’t the possibility of SpaceX’s failure, but the possibility that SpaceX becomes too successful, according to satellite communications analyst Farrar.

“Their risk has always been that SpaceX gets a lot of money from NASA and so will likely put them first,” Farrar said. “That’s also the exciting, novel stuff like manned spaceflight, so people naturally gravitate towards it. Launching commercial satellites is a less exciting business requiring a lot of repetitive, careful engineering.”

Dragon Spacecraft

SpaceX has been on quite the roll lately. It hasn’t suffered a single failure in its three Falcon 9 launches, the last of which delivered the company’s Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station on a resupply mission. Earlier this month, SpaceX won the ultimate prize: a $440 million contract from NASA to design a manned spacecraft to shuttle its now-grounded astronauts into orbit.

When asked if SpaceX’s recent success jeopardized Iridium’s tight launch schedule, Desch laughed. He admitted that he freaks out a little when Musk goes off on one of his soliloquies about exploring other planets or talks up new rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy designed to propel astronauts on their extraplanetary adventures. Desch just needs to get to low-Earth orbit, not Mars.

But Desch said Iridium has SpaceX’s full attention. Iridium Next is still SpaceX’s single largest commercial contract — it’s not going to get pushed to the wayside no matter how many sexier missions the company lands. Desch has been working with Musk and Shotwell for nearly six years, sticking with the company through its lowest points. He believes that SpaceX will remember its early friends. As he told analysts at Iridium’s earning call: “We knew them when they weren’t quite as cool.”

Iridium flare photo courtesy of Flickr user Gadget_Guru

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Update: An earlier version of this article said the company was based in Estonia. Which was stupid, since it’s not.

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Hong Kong’s new flagship Apple retail store saw more than 3,000 people show up in hopes of getting their hands on a device or devices, but only 1,250 of those were allowed to actually line up. All new iPhone models were gone only three hours after the store opened. Many of the sales were apparently to people intending to resell the devices on the gray market in China, where the 4S has not yet made its official debut. Interest was no doubt also strong since Apple’s iPhone 4S pre-orders in Hong Kong sold out in just 10 minutes, so going out to stores was the next best chance to get a device early.

Police even had to break up altercations between customers and those waiting in line to secure devices for gray market resale, according to a report from M.I.C. Gadget.

South Korea also saw long 4S lines at Apple’s wireless carrier partner stores, since Apple doesn’t have any official retail outlets in the country as of yet. The first 100 people who pre-ordered their iPhones at SK Telecom were also invited to participate in pre-dawn activation celebrations with popular Korean hip hop stars.

Friday also saw the introduction of the unlocked iPhone 4S to the U.S. online Apple Store in addition to the international launches.

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Apple plans to have the iPhone 4S up for sale in over 70 countries by the end of the year, and its current pace of adding between seven and 22 countries per batch with about two weeks between each definitely puts them on pace to meet that goal fairly easily. Besides Hong Kong and South Korea, the 4S will also come to Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, and Romania beginning Nov. 11.

Pre-orders for the phones start in most of those countries, with the exception of Albania, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro and Panama on Nov. 4, a week prior to the launch. By the time the 4S was available for direct sale in the first two crops of launch countries, it already carried a one- to two-week lead time for online sales, so customers in the new countries who are able to do so are advised to pre-order if they want to get their hands on a device as soon as possible.

International customers should remember that Siri, while not initially configured to work with maps and local search in international markets, should gain localization support sometime in 2012, according to Apple’s official FAQ for the voice-powered virtual assistant.

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AT&T was the only U.S. carrier partner who didn’t get their own website’s pre-orders off the ground at the originally planned time of 12:01 a.m. PDT (3:01 a.m. EDT). Apple was also behind schedule and its own pre-orders didn’t go live until around 12:45 a.m. PDT. AT&T’s pre-orders on its own site didn’t start going live until around 1:15 a.m. PDT for anyone, and even then the experience was inconsistent. Though each carrier had trouble with network issues, AT&T had by far the lion’s share of issues, as this jab by Verizon on Twitter obliquely points out:

Here’s a great quote by commenter John M from our original news post that sums up a lot of the reaction I saw from frustrated AT&T customers:

Does this also speak to their quality of service??? Guess I won’t know until I can take off the ATT contract handcuffs!!!

Those issues extended to Apple’s own website. Customers trying to purchase an AT&T iPhone 4S through Apple.com at first encountered repeated errors, until finally Apple suspended pre-orders altogether at the U.S. site while they worked on resolving their issues.  Users instead were told their iPhone had been “reserved,” and they’d receive a follow-up email letting them know when they could complete their order. Those emails started going out around 4 a.m. PDT this morning.

Links included in the email lead customers back to the Apple Store to complete their orders, which is working fine this morning. As of this writing, the iPhone 4S is still listed to be delivered by Oct. 14 when ordered through the official Apple online store. We’ve confirmed that customers who have a reservation can still start the process as a brand new customer without following that link, and can still order a phone that way, too. Links to reserved orders from last night’s launch are valid until 5 p.m. PDT Saturday, however, so if stock levels change, customers who reserved a spot will still be able to jump the queue. Also, as of this writing, customers can’t access their account ordering information. Apple may be keeping this offline intentionally in order to avoid people taking down the servers with repeated refreshing of their order status.

While stock levels in the U.S. appear to remain strong at the moment, delivery times have quickly dropped  already in other international stores. In the U.K., Canada, Germany, France and Australian stores, for example, the iPhone 4S shows a shipping time of between one and two weeks. That, as well as the obvious network issues encountered by Apple during last night’s launch, point to strong interest in the smartphone. We’ll have to wait until we get some firm numbers about pre-order volume before we can tell how this launch stacks up to previous ones.

Additional reporting by Cyndy Aleo.

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Typically, Apple does its big product unveils at larger venues, like San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski says this time around, it’s aiming closer to home.

Earlier this month, AllThingsD also reported that the iPhone event would take place Oct. 4, and it reiterates that announcement timeline in the new report. Oct. 4 is just over a week away, and Apple has yet to make any official announcements or send out press invites.

Paczkowski suggests Apple’s decision to host the event at its own on-campus Town Hall Auditorium might have to do with the company having trouble nailing down a fixed launch date in order to book an outside venue, or that it could be designed to help new CEO Tim Cook’s first time taking the helm go more smoothly.

Whatever the reason, a smaller venue means a more exclusive guest list. It’ll be interesting to see who will and who won’t be in attendance if the event happens as reported next Tuesday.

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The first customer at the Leawood, KS store gets his iPads! From Dave Greenbaum:

The Apple Store opens in Leawood, KS, and Dave Greenbaum is there to catch the action:

3:20 — More new pictures in the gallery. A few new videos still to come.

2:44 — New photos in the gallery, including shots of Geoffrey Goetz getting his hands on an actual iPad 2!

Charles Jade shot this video of an Apple Store employee in NC telling people how to buy their iPads, and of the long line wrapping around the building:

2:18 — Updated with a bunch more photos, including some from San Francisco and one of the store opening in Durham, NC. Videos of store opening coming soon!

1:45 — Added a few new photos from Leawood, KS and Durham, NC to the image gallery below.

Another Mall of America customer looking forward to getting his hands on the iPad 2:

1:07 – Just added a bunch of new photos, including one of Apple setting up the new iPad 2 window display. Scroll down to the gallery to check them out.

The first two guys in line at the Leawood, KS store talk to Dave Greenbaum about the experience:

An interview sent in by Andy Flochinni with an early line-goer at the Mall of America:

Ryan Kim provides a longer look at the situation outside the NYC 5th Avenue Store:

Here’s a new video from Ryan Kim filmed at the NYC 5th Avenue Apple Store:

Writer Dave Greenbaum stopped by AT&T before heading to check out the line at the Leawood, KS Apple Store:

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Those buying at local Apple Stores will have the option of a free Personal Setup service. Introduced last year with the original iPad, Apple Store employees will help iPad 2 buyers set up email, load apps from the App Store, and customize settings. While not as time consuming as iPhone setup, this won’t help shorten lines already lengthened by a lack of pre-orders and the evening launch time. Plan on being at an Apple Store early (lines are already forming at some locations).

If you can’t get to an Apple Store, Best Buy, Target, Walmart/Sam’s Club will also begin selling the iPad 2 at 5:00 PM local time tomorrow, and presumably will have an option for buying online, though online plans have not yet been formally announced for these outlets. Prospective iPad 2 buyers should be aware that historically Apple retail partners have had considerably less stock of new Apple products, so while lines might be smaller, iPads will sell out much quicker.

Those looking for a 3G iPad will have to choose between Verizon and AT&T, both of which will offer the iPad for sale at retail stores tomorrow at 5:00 PM local time. In addition, AT&T will be selling the iPad 2 online, but not Verizon. If you’re still trying to decide on which network, price favors AT&T on data plans at the lower end of the bandwidth cap spectrum, but Verizon offers more data at a better price:

If you haven’t already decided which iPad 2 you want to buy, now is the time to choose, because tomorrow you’ll be too busy trying to find stock to worry about making decisions.

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