Verizon's Incredible Slow Start

Updated since 9:17am EDT with photo credits. NEW YORK, (TheStreet) -- Verizon(VZ) launched sales Thursday of the Droid Incredible by HTC, its newest flagship smartphone.

But the 8am pre-open scene at Verizon's Wall Street location was not exactly abuzz with eager Incredible buyers. The shot of the Verizon store above was taken with Verizon's Incredible's 8-megapixel camera, by the way.

Judging by the lack of crowds at a few New York Verizon store locations Thursday morning, the arrival of the Verizon Incredible may not be a door buster on day one. The Verizon Incredible has been available on pre-order for two week prior to the phone's debut at stores.

The pre-order push may account for some of the slow initial retail store. Verizon has encouraged consumers to order the phone in advance. This may have drawn early buyers away from the stores, though Verizon has never commanded the sort of crowds for new devices that say Apple(AAPL) has in recent years.

Reports from a few Verizon store precincts show that the company wasn't necessarily preparing for a big initial rush.

Here in New York, Verizon's hometown, stores were given limited numbers of Incredibles to sell. All six of the Incredibles available at the company's 42nd Street store were sold in the first ten minutes. At the Madison Ave. store, four of the Incredibles available were also sold within minutes.

One New York Verizon sales rep said that stores were allocated 20 phones but that most of those were held for customers who pre-ordered for pickup. Other reps said they were telling customers who were unable to buy the phone that orders today would be mailed to them by May 4.

The Verizon Incredible -- with its 8-megapixel camera, fast Qualcomm(QCOM) Snapdragon processor and 16 gigabyte storage capacity -- has been dubbed by reviewers as the best Google(GOOG) Android phone yet. The Incredible's arrival several weeks before the new Apple iPhone also gives Verizon a jump on sales ahead of the hot smartphone season.

It's still early, but it would appear that Verizon isn't going to have an incredible sales tally for its new Droid today.

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