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As millions in the U.S. breathlessly anticipate the release of Apple's iPhone Friday, one can't help but feel that we've been down the road before.

Back in November, hundreds of people camped outside electronic stores for days to be the first to own the Nintendo Wii or Sony PlayStation 3. Savvy entrepreneurs flipped extra units for a premium on the black market. And teens made headlines after uploading videos of themselves smashing the consoles on YouTube.

It should be no real surprise that with the release of yet another high-profile electronic product, we're witnessing more of the same, but thanks to the legions of Apple devotees around the world buzzing about the iPhone on blogs and in chat rooms, the same frenzy the console gaming market saw is now taking place on a much larger scale.

"The buzz never really died down when [Apple] announced the iPhone between January and now," Gartner analyst Mike McGuire said. "This is no longer a product launch, it's a full blown social event. It reminds me when I used to line up for rock bands when I was younger."

Line-ups for the device are taking place all across Apple's 164 U.S. stores. In New York, people began lining up outside the Apple Store at Times Square on Monday, five days before the iPhone hits shelves.

Although Elizabeth Santiso is waiting outside SoHo's Apple Store, she's getting one for more altruistic reasons. As vice-president of Keep a Child Alive, Ms. Santiso spearheaded a campaign for her charity to hold the first spot in line for an iPhone. After recruiting more than 80 people to take two-hour shifts, she plans on reselling the device to raise money for her charity, which provides African children dying of AIDS with free medicine and funds to build orphanages.

"People are shocked to learn that we're waiting outside for an iPhone so early, but once they learn we're doing this for charity, we're getting their full support," said Ms. Santiso, who hopes to raise more than $2,000.

Other enterprising individuals are using the iPhone's launch to make a quick buck.

Type in "iPhone" on Craigslist or eBay and hundreds of listings come up of people offering their time for hundreds of dollars to wait in line for you and guarantee to get an iPhone into your hands. Similarly, others have taken a page from Wii and PS3 black market success stories, where resale prices were often 250 per cent the original value.

Unfortunately, their efforts were short-lived. Last week, eBay removed all presale iPhone auctions off the site, saying the postings violated their terms of agreement. Some ads for the device are still available on Craigslist, but Mr. McGuire says it's still too early to tell how the resale market is going to look following Friday's launch.

"I would wonder how many people are going to actually give up an iPhone after they use it," Mr. McGuire said.

A lack of a resale market may be a blessing in disguise. After the buzz from the PS3 quickly died down, people who thought they could flip the console for a premium were left holding an expensive piece of hardware.

The same situation could occur, says IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi, since the hype for the iPhone is so high, the only place it can go is down.

"If the iPhone doesn't perform to everyone's full expectations, that could create some backlash and affect a resale market, if it were to exist," Ms. Bakhshi said. "But I do think that there will be some level of disappointment with the iPhone no matter what, because of the amount of imagination and energy people have already invested in it."

Mr. Bakhshi's counsel is to just take a deep breath and relax, saying there's plenty of time to pass judgment on a phone many of us haven't handled with yet.

"The Earth is still going to be in orbit tomorrow and at the end of the day, it's just another mobile phone," he said.

And yes, just like the fates shared by the PS3 and Wii, there is another group of youngsters planning on smashing the iPhone in the name of satire and art.

Jordan Keeling, a 16-year-old from San Jose, Calif., plans on buying an iPhone Friday along with several of his associates from SmashYourStuff.com, and are videotaping themselves destroying it in front of the Apple flagship store in San Francisco.

Mr. Keeling, who has smashed other high-profile electronics such as the Wii and PSP, has raised about half the cost of the phone through a petition on his website. He says that he's performing the stunt to get a rise out diehard Apple fans.

"I wouldn't really classify myself as an artist, but people have said that what we're doing is art. We're trying to break people away from what they're addicted to," he said.