New Delhi and Warsaw - Apple (NASD: AAPL) on Friday launched its iPhone 3G in India and Poland, but while crowds lined up at midnight sales at several locations in India, Apple's Polish iPhone carrier partner, Orange, said it paid actors to create "fake queues" at 20 of its stores in the country, Reuters reported. The iPhone 3G retails for a whopping $700 in India, compared with $199 in the U.S., but Indian carrier partner Airtel told Reuters it counted more than 200,000 pre-bookings before prices were announced.

"It is seen as a status symbol, an aspirational product, so you can expect to see not just the rich, but also tech-savvy youngsters and people in small towns buying it," Pinaki Mishra, head of the retail & consumer practice at Ernst & Young, told Reuters.

Meanwhile, while no iPhone lines were reported to be seen outside T-Mobile's Era stores in Poland, an Orange spokesman confirmed to Reuters that it paid "dozens" of actors to stand in fake lines as part of its marketing campaign for the device's launch there.

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