The new phone went on sale across, Europe, Asia and Australia with mobile carriers reporting record demand that looked likely to stretch Apple’s supply capacity. Apple has booked more than 2 million orders for the device in the first 24 hours, double the first-day sales of the previous iPhone 4S.

Some analysts expect Apple to sell up to 10 million iPhone 5 models in the remaining days of September and JP Morgan estimates the phone release could provide a $3.2 billion boost to the US economy in the fourth quarter. The amount is almost the same as the economy of Fiji.

Some users criticised the maps feature for a number of geographical errors, missing information and a lack of features.

Hundreds of French iPhone fans lining up at Apple’s main store in Paris got an earful from disgruntled employees and former retailers protesting against the group’s policies. In London’s Regent Street about 1,300 people lined up to buy the phone, nearly double for the launch of the previous phone. In Germany, 19-year-old musician Okan Yasin had waited since lunchtime on Thursday to be at the front of the queue at the Frankfurt Apple shop. Proudly holding a sign saying Ich bin Nummer 1, he said:

I just need to have it. I know that the new iPhone from a new features perspective hardly has anything extra to offer. But I just needed to be here. It’s the hype, man! In Australia, about 600 people queued around the block from the Apple store in Sydney, the first in the world to hand over an iPhone 5 to a buyer. Customers were limited to buying a maximum of two phones. In Tokyo, the lines stretched back several blocks. In Hong Kong, people carrying rucksacks filled with cash waited outside the city’s main store hoping to snap up phones for resale. Staff there chanted iPhone 5, iPhone 5.