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!
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
6 responses to “Scalpers Control Up To 95% Of China’s White iPhone 4 Supply”
Horrible. I am guessing the only to prevent scalpers is by forcing them to activate on-site. Otherwise, SOL.
Orr….Apple could make sure they have adequate stock to sell to all of the scalpers and still have inventory on the shelves when the lines are done….making them worthless due to over-availability and sticking the scalpers with the overage
Wow, apple fans overpaying for products. This is news.