India Queues Up for the iPhone 5

Apple Inc. AAPL -3.31% on Friday launched the iPhone 5 across India, creating a stir among the gadget freaks in the fastest growing wireless market in the world.

Bharti Airtel Ltd. 532454.BY -2.12%, one of Apple’s service-provider partners in India, held launch events in four major cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.

The iPhone 5 comes to India more than a month after Apple launched it in its major markets.

The iPhone has a tiny market share in India — less than 2% of all handset sales — because of its high cost. South Korean firm Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +2.31% has about a 50% market share.

But distributors of the iPhone 5 said sales in India appeared to be much swifter than for previous versions of the smartphone.

A spokesman for Bharti Airtel, who declined to be named, said the company saw a 78% spike in preorders for the iPhone 5, compared with the iPhone 4S. Bharti Airtel started taking preorders for the phone three days before the launch.

A spokesman for Apple in India wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Crowds swarmed — with wads of Indian rupees and credit cards — at an amphitheatre in the plush UB City mall located in the heart of Bangalore to pick up the smartphone.

Six makeshift counters in the mall together sold 600 iPhone 5s in the first hour of the launch.

The iPhone 5 is priced at 45,500 rupees ($846) for the basic 16-gigabyte version. The 32-gigabyte model is priced at 52,500 rupees and the 64- gigabyte version at 59,500 rupees.

“Whatever numbers we have is going to be sold out completely,” said Rohit Malhotra, the chief executive of Bharti Airtel in Karnataka state, pointing to the teeming crowd. “We didn’t even have a hundredth of this crowd” last year, he added.

Arjun Gupta, 23 years old and running a pharmaceutical distribution business in Mysore, said he travelled 140 kilometers to Bangalore to pick up his preordered phone on the first day of the sale.

Mr. Gupta, who had been waiting in the queue for more than an hour, feared the phone might have been sold out if he didn’t preorder one. Mr. Gupta said he owns most of Apple’s products that have been launched in India, but he skipped the iPhone 4 and 4S, to wait for upgraded versions.

Analysts expect the iPhone 5 to do swifter sales in India than previous incarnations, as the launch comes just a few days before the Hindu festival of Diwali, which will be celebrated in India on Nov. 13, when most Indians splurge on luxury products such as smartphones, gold jewelry, and autos.

Like Mr. Gupta, most buyers had preordered the phones from carriers such as Bharti Airtel and Aircel Ltd., and mobile phone retailers that until recently had to depend on the telecommunications carriers for supplies of the phones.

Until recently, Apple sold the iPhone through Indian telecom providers, which bundle the phones with data services. With sales of the phones remaining low, Apple recently tweaked its strategy by tying up with specialized distribution companies such as Ingram Micro Inc. IM -1.64% and Redington India Ltd. 532805.BY +0.73% The move is expected to help the company reach a wider audience, especially Indians who live in thousands of smaller towns.

“Until now, we had been selling iPhones that were routed through wireless operators,” said Satish Babu, founder and managing director of Chennai-based UniverCell that runs 450 outlets, mostly in southern India.

“Starting with the iPhone 5, we are selling models that don’t come locked in to a particular operator,” he said. According to Mr. Babu, there is a growing awareness of the Apple brand in India.

“Also, as the time difference between global and India launches have narrowed, consumers will prefer going to buy it legally from stores like ours than buy it from the grey market,” he said.

In the past, illegally imported iPhones have made their way into India’s electronics markets.