Diehard Apple fans queue overnight to get their hands on the new iPad Air

Hundreds of Apple fans queued at Apple's flagship store in Covent Garden to buy the new iPad Air.

Customers had come from all over the world to buy the 9.7-inch tablet when the store opened at 8am this morning.

The first man to buy the iPad Air came from Moscow and was greeted by wild cheering as he left the store holding up his purchase.

Others had queued from 5pm on Wednesday afternoon and camped out overnight for 15 hours to buy the tablet.

The iPad Air is the fifth 9.7-inch model to be sold by the Californian firm and is 20 per cent thinner than the iPad 4, with a 5 Mega Pixel camera.

It is going on sale in 41 countries around the world, making it the biggest Apple tablet launch ever.

It had less of a welcome in Beijing, China, where 'a small trickle of walk-in customers' came in to buy the devices, according to Cnet in Asia.

Starting at £399, the new iPad Air reaffirms Apple's ambition to capture the top end of an expanding market, rather than stoop to challenge the growing number of manufacturers, including Tesco and Argos, now producing cheaper tablets for as little as £99.

The new device has also reportedly led to a 585 per cent increase in table trade-ins, research shows.

Nearly one in six people (15 per cent) of the 1,000 con.