This obscure object of desire

Norrice Auen and her 18-year-old son Luke arrived at the Derby Street Shoppes in Hingham on Thursday evening.

Mom spent the night on the sidewalk, sleeping on a yoga mat and a Red Sox towel. Luke bunked in the Hummer.

But they were only second in line when the Apple store finally threw open its doors at 6 p.m. yesterday, capping weeks of hype and anticipation over the latest must-have tech accessory.

People skipped work, played hooky, and paid friends or strangers to stand in line on their behalf -- all to be among the first to lay their hands on an iPhone.

"My grandmother's doing well, but my co-workers don't think so," said a Hingham resident who sat in a lawn chair reading "Mao: The Unknown Story" and asked to remain anonymous because he had left word at the office that he needed to travel to see his grandmother.

The launch of the phone -- on a summer Friday -- was the culmination of a perfectly played marketing pitch.

Take an object that people already fiddle with compulsively.

Add a screen that makes the device even more touchable, and emphasize the allure of touching it.

Then don't let anyone near one for six months.

"It builds the mystique. What makes something more mysterious than you can't touch it?" said Kathy Sharpe , chief executive of Sharpe Partners, an interactive ad agency based in New York. "They've positioned it as a product that is responsive to you and at the same transforming" the way you use a device. "I think it's brilliant marketing."

The line began forming outside the Apple Store at the Cambridgeside Galleria at 6 a.m. yesterday; the Burlington Mall was transformed into a landscape of laptops and lawn chairs; more than 100 people stood outside the AT&T store on Boylston Street in Boston when the store opened its doors.

A security guard at the door of the Boylston Street store let buyers in a few at a time. Mat Marquis was first in line, a privilege he'd earned by spending Thursday night on the sidewalk outside, and the crowd cheered when he was allowed to enter alone.

But the first sale went to Nikita Konovalchuk, a 19-year-old from Ashland.

"What doesn't it do?" he said, extolling the powers of the device, which combines the ability to make calls, play music, and surf the web in a slim package. "You've got a Nano in your pocket. You've got a cell phone You don't even need a laptop."

Allan Yogasingam , a 26-year-old engineer from Ottawa camped out in a maple leaf chair outside the Hingham store for 12 hours, and was back in the car on the way to the airport by 6:10 p.m. Today, he plans to go into the office to show the phone to his co-workers.

"There'll be lots of people getting their grubby fingers all over it," he said.

The media frenzy over Apple's foray into the cellphone market prompted analyst firm Strategy Analytics to title a recent report "Will the iPhone Stop Global Warming?"

Strategy Analytics concluded that the iPhone would bring in new revenue of $1.4 billion to AT&T, which has an exclusive deal to carry the phone initially, but decided the phone was not likely have noticeable effects on the climate.

"Given the hype, you'd believe this device was going to stop global warming, to solve some medical problem -- and in fact it won't," said Harvey Cohen , president of Strategy Analytics based in Newton. Though he has not yet touched the phone that has earned the moniker "Jesus phone" in the blogosphere, "we'd put reasonable odds that even if there are a large number of users it won't reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

While marketing experts lauded Apple's strategy, they were more skeptical about AT&T's success in using the product launch to make the transition from Cingular Wireless to AT&T. People waiting in line still referred to the company as Cingular, and while company-owned stores were scheduled to be re-branded as AT&T stores by launch, authorized retailers were not told when they would receive the iPhone, and some still look like Cingular stores.

"They should have been able to do it everyplace because now don't they look so very limited? It makes the company appear smaller than it actually is," said Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a brand loyalty consulting firm in New York.

In the run-up to the release, online searches for "iPhone" went through the roof, growing 583 percent over four weeks ended June 23, according to Internet tracking firm Hitwise. Apple's iPhone website nearly doubled its market share of visits from US users in the same time period, and was the 131st most popular search term.

Ian Venskus, a 23-year-old from Medford, just graduated from Western Kentucky University. His parents were paying for the iPhone as a graduation present. He held up his current phone, a gray Motorola model. "It's time for a new phone," said Venskus. "Why not get the best phone on the planet?"

Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray contributed to this story. Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.