Apple fans line up for hours to get their hands on the iPhone 15

• Apple's iPhone 15 went on sale in around 40 countries on Friday.
• Eager fans around the world have been lining up to get their hands on the latest model.
• The new phone has been seeing strong demand since it was initially unveiled on September 12.

Apple's new iPhone 15 arrived in around 40 countries on Friday, leading some eager fans to line up for hours to try and secure one of the devices.

The phone was initially unveiled at Apple's "Wonderlust" event on September 12 and has been available to preorder since September 15. The phone is on sale in countries including Australia, China, the US, the UK, and France.

One customer outside the Apple store in Mumbai told Indian news agency ANI: "I have been here since 3 p.m. yesterday. I waited in the queue for 17 hours to get the first iPhone at India's first Apple store. I have come from Ahmedabad."

Another customer from Ahmedabad said he'd flown to the city the day before and had been in the queue for hours.

"I was at the store opening a few months ago where I was fortunate enough to meet Tim Cook for the second time," he added.

Apple's new offering has seen strong demand and preorders. Last week, fans even crashed the tech giant's website as they flocked to book appointments and place orders for the phones.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a Monday note that preorders for the iPhone 15 were up between 10% and 12% year-over-year when compared with initial preorders for the last model, iPhone 14.

Despite the release being hotly anticipated, the phone's new features have failed to impress some fans.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the new phones were missing a chip that Apple spent billions of dollars trying to develop the chips in time for the rollout. Various problems of the tech giant's own making hampered the chip's development, the publication reported.