11 July 2008 is iPhone day in the UK and in several other countries, but have O2 underestimated the demand Apple’s hype machines have conjured up?

It was love at first sight for me - watching Steve Jobs introduction of the new iPhone last month. Now that the new iPhone includes 3G, and GPS navigation, cool new application, and the promise of the new iPhone Apps Store open for business the same day the new phone is released.

In the UK, you can only get an iPhone from O2, and at the end of last week they emailed a teaser to everyone who had registered interest in the new phone. ‘It’s coming!’ was the general gist of the message - ‘hold on tight, watch this space, get ready to rock ‘n roll baby’ - and it seems that a whole lot of us are.

Today, in the runup to ‘iPhone Friday’ as we are calling it in our house, O2 sent out an email announcing we could preorder online. But the website could not process my order. It did tell me to contact a national help number, but when I called the number a pleasant voice informed me that if I wanted to preorder the new iPhone I must do it online - at the website that was telling me to call the number that was referring me to the website. You could get dizzy trying.

Undaunted, I tried my local O2 store - they would surely have the answers having all been on their iPhone training. Alas, all they could tell me was that the website ordering was for existing O2 customers only, and the only way to get my trembling hands on my very own iPhone 3G was to be patiently waiting in the queue on Friday morning. Probably in the rain.

It seems that huge demand brought the O2 website to its knees today, with so many people trying to order online before iPod Friday arrives. You have to wonder if the usual line of ‘we have plenty of stock coming into the store’ that I have now been told three times, is true.

Late tonight, the O2 website is calmly announcing that due to unprecedented demand, online ordering has been discontinued until 10 July, 24 hours before iPhone Friday. We’ll find out Friday if there is one for me - I’ll be the short, bald fella twice the age of the rest of them.