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iPhone 4 Sells Out in Apple's Chinese Online Store in Only 10 Hours, Scalpers Blamed

really they want to spend $700 and up iPhone?, it is expensive outside of US.

wow, people are rich enough to buy these iPhones

are they reselling these iPhone 4 to US? iPhones are unlocked in China right?
 
Small White Car said:
Why the quotation marks? They're real sales. I mean, it sucks for the real customers, but Apple got paid. They're actual sales, not "sales."
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Sucks for Apple also. The premium scalpers charge real customers could be used to buy accessories or maybe even another iPhone.
 
Meh, it's just arbitrage. Way more demand than supply, and since Apple doesn't use a price auctioning system to equalize supply & demand, someone else will.

Makes more sense than a lineup. Whoever wants it first can just pay the most.

Now sure they aren't end-users, but whatever stock they buy up will eventually go to an end-user.

If Apple wants to cut out the middle-man, they should just do the auctioning themselves.
 
All these reports about iPhone scalpers and the negativity surrounding them in China makes me feel quite ashamed of my own people. Then again, I can't blame them since the environment in China so different from the United States. Every man for themselves!
 
Good luck to the people flipping them, I'd be doing the same thing if I had time to do it. Lots of money to be made. More power to them.
 
alphaod said:
Except the demand has been very high for the last three and some years. There is nothing temporary about it.



If you have ever been to China, you'll see the demand is very very high. People are paying as high as $2500 for the factory unlocked ones.
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Average income for city dwellers last year in China was what...$2700 or $2800 I believe.

So they only need to work almost a whole year to afford one.

Benjamins said:
Sucks for Apple also. The premium scalpers charge real customers could be used to buy accessories or maybe even another iPhone.
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Or hell, an Apple computer ffs. It's a LOT of potential loss they are seeing with scalpers there. No real way to combat it though. "Limit of 1 per customer" doesn't really work when you have 1.3 billion of them. You just get Joe Schmo, or Ching Ling or whatever the equivalent is, off the corner to go buy one. Rinse repeat 20 times.
 
Benjamins said:
can't they just put a limit for 1 or 2 iphone per credit cards?

Unless the scalpers have a few thousand credit cards on standby, otherwise they are not going to be very effective.
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Credit cards are mostly an American thing plus a few other countries at the most.
 
what's the big fuss about this?

they did not force you to buy from them.

if you don't want to buy from them, just wait until apple restocks.

it happens everywhere that ppl buy and resell.
 
4nNtt said:
That is a very uninformed comment. China is communist because of the one party system and because the government has more power to regulate, not because people don't know how to be entrepreneurial. Capitalism isn't illegal in China. It is actually encouraged. China has been trying to get rid of any remaining state owned business and are certainly not expanding that. If anything the scalpers are against law/regulation because they are not respecting Apple's terms.
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Kindly direct your uninformed scolding to others. I know very well how China works. We are witnessing a generation of Chinese who have taken the governments lightening of business rules and running with it. More power to them. But there was a time in the middle-to-late part of the 20th century when being entrepreneurial would get you into big trouble. Some of those folks are still alive and remember, even if the younger generation only knows this new, more free-wheeling, world.

So my comment was to point out that once a society is allowed to once again become entrepreneurial, they quickly learn all that is legal and good, and just as quickly all that is skirting the rules and laws and is annoying.
 
What's going to happen when the Chinese system cannot handle all those phones?

And "M.I.C gadget reports, however, that the store's supplies of the iPhone 4 recent incidents in Apple's retail stores in China, scalpers are being blamed for rapid depletion of Apple's online store stocks."? Please proofread so we can understand what you write.
 
kntgsp said:
Average income for city dwellers last year in China was what...$2700 or $2800 I believe.

So they only need to work almost a whole year to afford one.
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Don't know what the median income in China is, but if it is something similar to the average income, that means there are 670+ million people who make more than that, and probably 100 million who can afford an iPhone -- not dissimilar in size from the potential US audience for iPhones.

Apple's problem is not Android -- it is making iPhones fast enough.
 
I know a fellow from Hong Kong who does this. I don't know exactly how but he buys stocks from Hong Kong and sends them to neighboring countries that do not yet have the iPhone available like in Indonesia and the Philippines and add a +100% margin on it. Did the same with the iPad and he makes quite a killing as the demand in these local markets is so strong that some buyers there are willing up to 3 times the SRP just to get their hand on the latest iGadget.
 
So wait, you mean I could actually put mine on eBay and export it to China? That's really tempting.

Somewhere, someone is getting killed over a freaking iPhone, no doubt. That's pretty sad.

Somewhere, someone is smuggling an iPhone up their ass out of a factory. That's pretty gross.
 
shanmugam said:
really they want to spend $700 and up iPhone?, it is expensive outside of US.

wow, people are rich enough to buy these iPhones

are they reselling these iPhone 4 to US? iPhones are unlocked in China right?
Click to expand...

You can buy them unlocked and contract-free for €739 here (iP4 32 GiB). That seems like a reasonable price if you'd like to go with a (multiple) prepaid uSIM(s).
 
Auction?

Maybe Apple should just switch to an auction model so at least if there's going to be scalpers Apple gets the bulk of the extra profit. Drop 10K iPhone4's a day onto eBay for 24-hour auctions, or set up a bidding system on the Online Apple Store.
 
Here unlocked costs 1100eur for the 32GB version(******* expensive). The iPhone wasn't officialy available here and some stores already where selling them for a premium:eek:

edit: used to cost 1300eur
 
In Taiwan, the iPhone 4 just hit the market about a month ago and the supply is still pretty limited. Those carriers are issuing so called "pre-order ticket", which is limited to one per purchaser and has a exact time for purchaser to pick up his/her iPhone 4. It is designed to save people from waiting a long line at any carrier's POS and to prevent scalpers to suck up all the iPhone supply when available. However, such "pre-order ticket" is transferable and having zero out of pocket cost to get one. All you need is to send a request through your carrier's website and you'll get one. So, instead of selling actual iPhone 4, people in Taiwan are selling the "right to purchase", which is priced between 30 to 50 USD depending on the waiting time stated on such ticket. If you are a family of four, you can earned 200 USD in a day without any out of pocket cost.
 
Apple needs to introduce a more advanced CAPTCHA verification method if possible. Or that the scalpers have teams of people defeating the CAPTCHA (probably) at that screen of their automated shopping bot. LOL.
 
So lemme get this straight. They can make the phones, they just can't buy them. Or are the Chinese units assembled in Alabama?
 
blackburn said:
Here unlocked costs 1100eur for the 32GB version(******* expensive). The iPhone wasn't officialy available here and some stores already where selling them for a premium:eek:

edit: used to cost 1300eur
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just take a quick ride to Italy like everyone else ;)

the money you'd save would allow you to stay on a Tuscan farm for a week (250€/week last October.)
 
Benjamins said:
Sucks for Apple also. The premium scalpers charge real customers could be used to buy accessories or maybe even another iPhone.
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Wrong.

People who can afford to pay the mega premium for a reseller will be able to afford any accessories they want.
 
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