When the iPad 2 debuted back in March, half of all the people waiting in line outside of the 5th Avenue Store were Asian scalpers looking to ship the iPad 2 overseas to China and Hong Kong.
Hysterically, the same thing is happening again now that the white iPhone 4is here… but it’s happening in China, where as many as 95% of all people camped outside of the Beijing Apple Store are scalpers.. And they are brazenly reselling the white iPhone 4 to real prospective buyers right outside of the store… at a 200-500 yuan (or between $33 and $77) markup per device.
The end result is that scalpers are controlling almost 100% of the white iPhone 4 supply in China, and selling them for a profit accordingly. Not all the profit is generated merely by reselling the iPhone either: another way money is made is by opening up the iPhone 4, replacing the battery with an inferior one, and then selling the real iPhone battery to knock-off manufacturers. Tricky!
