iPhone 4S Demand Remains Strong as International Rollouts Continue

[100LL]

They might be sold out in 10 minutes (more like 30 mins, still very impressive to generate news and hype) but users are UNHAPPY. Shame on Apple!

Pre-orders in Hong Kong went online at 8:00 AM local time and at 8:45 my friend was still able to place an order. That makes 45 minutes or more to me, not 10 minutes. That analyst is full of crap.

Fully agree with the 10 pieces limit. It shows that Apple is intentionally using HK to sell units on the grey market and into China. Not nice to loyal Apple customers, who have to pay a premium to get it in the phone shops of Sin Tat.

 

[haruhiko]

Pre-orders in Hong Kong went online at 8:00 AM local time and at 8:45 my friend was still able to place an order. That makes 45 minutes or more to me, not 10 minutes. That analyst is full of crap.

Fully agree with the 10 pieces limit. It shows that Apple is intentionally using HK to sell units on the grey market and into China. Not nice to loyal Apple customers, who have to pay a premium to get it in the phone shops of Sin Tat.

This is my personal experience:

I kept reloading the Apple Store website since 8:00am and what I got were several times of "Oops.... some errors occurred" between 8:00am and 8:20am, before I was able to place my order slightly before 8:30am...After that I phoned my friends telling them the 4S was available, and the website started to have difficulty in checking out since 8:45. So to me it's about 20 mins of normal functioning of the ordering system. But it's definitely not 10 minutes.


RE: the 10 phones per customer limit

I agree that it's a way for Apple to grasp the early demand from mainland China since the Chinese government requires some time to approve any foreign device to be sold in the mainland. But even if the 4S is approved and available in mainland China, there will still be crazy demand in Hong Kong due to the price difference.

A factory unlocked iPhone 4S 16GB in Hong Kong without contract is HK$5,088 ($652), and the same phone in China (if the price is same as the iPhone 4), costs you CNY5,888 = HK$7,065.6 = $905, a whooping $250 difference in price.

 

[Dreamer2go]

Thank you for the overstatement hahaha
55 minutes was the time of the pre-orders to be completely sold out, not 10.

I live in HK and I would know hahaa
luckily, I was the one of the few that gets to buy ONE for myself =)

upgrading this from a iPhone 4!!

 

[japanime]

There's still a three-week wait for the 4s here in Japan. Apple absolutely owns this market.

 

[DamenS]

With all due respect, why or how would large sales in the (predominantly English-speaking) Hong Kong, "rest" fears about uptake in Mainland China (which speak Mandarin and Cantonese) being limited due to Siri being "english" only ? That comment does not make any sense whatsoever !!

 

[gorgeousninja]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

this article is proof in my eyes that people dont listen. the 4s has way too many issues for it to be selling out everywhere. i honestly thought they would have ironed out all of the problems by now with the .1 update, but they havent. they are still spitting out 150k a day so the build quality still sucks. they stated it would be a few weeks before they ironed out the battery issues and there is still glitch after glitch within the software.

did apple hit their "peak" with the i4? i think that might be highly possible.

may the -1s be stricken upon me for being 100% brutally honest.

Were you one of those supposed 'experts' calling the iphone4 a 'fail' because of the 'death grip' media invention?
Nobody listened then either... And more importantly no one regretted it.

 

[gloryunited]

With all due respect, why or how would large sales in the (predominantly English-speaking) Hong Kong, "rest" fears about uptake in Mainland China (which speak Mandarin and Cantonese) being limited due to Siri being "english" only ? That comment does not make any sense whatsoever !!

Nah, Hong Kong is predominantly Cantonese-speaking. English level in Hong Kong has been deteriorating in the last decade, thanks to the handover to China! The sales just showed how strong the demand in the grey market is.

And I don't know why the New Zealand pre-orders would be delivered almost 1 week earlier than HK, knowing that HK is RIGHT NEXT TO Shen-zhen where all the iPhones were being shipped from! and that the "Chap Lap Kok" area people saw in their tracking information is indeed the HK international airport.

 

[henrystar]

Wait, so Hong Kong is a country now?

Yes, and it is an ENGLISH speaking country, which is why this article is so silly - Siri speaks English, just like most Hong Kong people do (in addition to Cantonese, of course). Still, I hope 4S is big on the mainland, too. Which reminds me, I've read that there are more (mainland) Chinese currently learning English than there are English-speaking people in the world.

 

[koruki]

Many, I mean MANY users in Hong Kong just can't get their hands on the new iPhones because Apple allows 10 units per customer in pre-order. I've said it in other threads and I will say it again, 90% of the phones are being ordered in bulk by resellers and end up in mainland China.

People open multiple Apple ID's and simply order 20, 30, or even more. Profit per phone is like US$120+! You do the maths.

They might be sold out in 10 minutes (more like 30 mins, still very impressive to generate news and hype) but users are UNHAPPY. Shame on Apple!

If you followed the news, it was done on purpose. The first 4S launch allowed for 10 units each, delivery is at the end of the month. The difference is they fully charged for all 10 units(at $5xxx a unit, thats $50k) at the time of order whereas they usually charge upon receiving. This puts a massive strain on the bank accounts of the people abusing the system. They will launch another reserved batch on friday in Hong Kong and will be doing a China launch around December to make buying from Hong Kong even less appealing. To sum up, Apple is trying to screw these resellers over and rightly so.

There were forum posts from such resellers who found out their credit cards were charged for all 10 units at the time of order and instantly offered sell off 10 of the 20 they ordered with no mark up.

And I don't know why the New Zealand pre-orders would be delivered almost 1 week earlier than HK, knowing that HK is RIGHT NEXT TO Shen-zhen where all the iPhones were being shipped from! and that the "Chap Lap Kok" area people saw in their tracking information is indeed the HK international airport.

Further proof they trying to screw the people who order 10-20 phones cause there is already a planned launch for the China mainland market in December

 

[gloryunited]

If you followed the news, it was done on purpose. The first 4S launch allowed for 10 units each, delivery is at the end of the month. The difference is they fully charged for all 10 units(at $5xxx a unit, thats $50k) at the time of order whereas they usually charge upon receiving. This puts a massive strain on the bank accounts of the people abusing the system. They will launch another reserved batch on friday in Hong Kong and will be doing a China launch around December to make buying from Hong Kong even less appealing. To sum up, Apple is trying to screw these resellers over and rightly so.

There were forum posts from such resellers who found out their credit cards were charged for all 10 units at the time of order and instantly offered sell off 10 of the 20 they ordered with no mark up.



Further proof they trying to screw the people who order 10-20 phones cause there is already a planned launch for the China mainland market in December

Really? Let's hope Apple is doing something good for the users. I stay hugely disappointed right now because I could not pre-order even one for myself while many ordered 10 or 20 or 60 for ****'s sake.

If it turns out Apple has lots of reserved stock on launch day (which is today) I will be a bit happier. But still, people are paid by scalpers to queue for the phones at Apple Store and TENS OF THOUSANDS of phones will be sold in the China market BEFORE any launch in China.

The most important thing is that, even after the launch in China, even AFTER 16 months of selling the 4, they are still unavailable for Hong Kong users because people in China are paying premium to get the Hong Kong versions and scalpers are buying them all!