China Catches Smugglers Using Drones to Transport $80M Worth of iPhones From Hong Kong to Mainland

[JPack]

What you don’t realise, is that the cost of iPhone X is hundreds of yuan more expensive on the mainland.

This fiasco plays itself out every Apple product release in HK. It is impossible to buy iPhones in the shops for months after release in HK as they were all scooped up by touts. Now you have to enter a daily lottery to get one, a lottery that is fully subscribed in the first few seconds.

(As an aside, the reason why iPhone X didn’t do as well in Asia as expected is that it’s too small. Everyone uses large devises as most people don’t have the room or the desire to have their only deceive, small.)

I mean really, why do you think the drone guys got caught? As Apple once said, Think.

I was the first one in this thread to say the iPhone X is US$300 more expensive than HK. As a result, everyone reading this thread already knows that.

iPhone X and 8 were launched simultaneously worldwide in most major countries, including U.S. and China. So the smuggling isn't because Chinese consumers don't have access to buying iPhone X. There is no lottery system for buying iPhone X in China.

The reason for the smuggling from HK to China is purely because of the import tax.

You introduced nothing new to this thread.

 

[SoGood]

IIRC, HK has the lowest Apple product pricing globally, taking into account of the exchange rate as well as any duties/taxes. So the situation can partly be explained by the low cost base for doing business there as well as Apple’s choice in price setting.

As for Mainland China and the price differential, Apple is well aware of all these as well as the smuggle trade. Nothing surprising.

 

[alphaod]

That’s not a HW difference but iOS implementation associated with the particular AppleID account and local server.

Not really a hardware difference is correct, however there is actually no way to enable the FaceTime Audio part. Doesn't matter if you have a particular Apple ID or local server. It just doesn't work. I have a Chinese iPhone 5, 6s, 7 Plus; there is no way to enable FaceTime Audio.

So as far as the regular consumer is concerned, FaceTime Audio is not available on the Chinese iPhone.