In less than 24 hours, Apple and AT&T stores are set to unleash the long-awaited iPhone 3G on a mostly suspecting North America, yet as of Thursday afternoon, only a handful of fanboys had bothered to line up.

Over at Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship "cube" store, only three more people had joined the rag-tag group of activists and would-be world-record breakers by 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, making for a grand total of about a dozen souls (this according to CNET's Crave blog).

A short while later, I ambled over to the Soho Apple store, where I found a stack of metal barricades, a hot dog cart, and ... well, a line of three people. Keep in mind that last year, the first iPhone fanatics began lining up at the Soho store about four days before the handset went on sale.

The scene was even more tranquil Thursday afternoon at the Apple Store in Manhattan's meatpacking district, where the bloggers at Racked found no line at all.

The iPhone camping action looked just as weak on the West Coast. CNET reporters in San Francisco spotted a whopping two people waiting in line at the Market Street Apple store Thursday morning—one of whom said he was only buying the iPhone 3G for a friend in Spain. In Palo Alto, similar story.

So, what does it all mean? Is there just not that much demand for the iPhone 3G?

Actually, from what I've been hearing, there is plenty of demand. Indeed, as Racked noted, Apple employees say they're expecting good-sized crowds Thursday evening, especially once people start getting off work.

That said, I don't think anyone's too worried about an iPhone 3G shortage. After all, they day after the first big launch last year, there were still plenty of iPhones to go around.

Update: As expected, the Fifth Avenue line got much longer as the evening wore on; still, Crave estimates that it's only a quarter the size of last year's line. 

Related:
Finally spotted in the iPhone line: Fanboys [Crave]