Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 4S Launch Delayed in Beijing as SWAT Teams Respond to Violence
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That only works when Apple gives the option. They may not have in this case.
As for what apparently happened. If the crowd was being unruly, fights etc then I say that Apple made the correct decision not to open the door and put their employees at risk of being victims of further violence.
Apple needs to do something about this kind of nonsense regardless of country but their hands are tied about what they can do. If they refuse to take cash they get reemed for being racist etc because some black woman that can't be bothered to open a bank account wants an iPad. If they try to put up rules like you must pre-order/reserve with a proper apple id and present a photo id and the credit card used for the order (also just requiring you give a credit card to reserve) they get seemed for similar rules. If they try to have security monitor lines and a group of Asians are asked to leave as suspected scalpers, for cutting lines etc, they are racist again. If they try to say you have to present a US id to buy in the US, racist. If they say absolutely no full price no activation phones they have to have the carriers actually able to monitor how many lines someone is opening. ANd even then they just have several folks opening accounts to get around that 5 per person gambit.
they have tried various ways with the iPhones and the iPads. and nothing is working. Perhaps they should pull these products out of the stores for the first month of release and you have to order online with a credit card and an Apple ID. Or perhaps they could do it online ordering with pick up in stores for the US but no walking. That might stem the tide a little. Although it will still get them slammed that they are racist, hate poor folks etc because not everyone has a computer with which to place the order, you can't use cash online etc.
Last edited:
you mean the IFC shop isnt big enough to throw an egg at? The scalpers in HK got it hard, Apple fully charged their credit cards before product was delivered then re-released new stock a week later while holding onto all their money
Yeah, they should riot over important issues, like L.A. does when the Lakers win the NBA championship.That looks bad. Sad that's over a phone
One way to kill that is to ban folks from waiting overnight but that requires the assistance of private security and/or the local police to get rid of those folks and block lining up before say 7am. Reservation requirements would be another way to limit things but then again all you need to have an Apple ID (and get another limit of however many) is to create another email address etc. Easy to do with places like gmail, yahoo, aol giving them out for free. So you'd have to require the entry of a credit card and billing address and create a system to also limit by credit card, billing address etc. And then folks will figure it out and a way to get around it. And the game will continue.
They are scalpers. So maybe they don't even care what it is. They buy them simple to re-sell. Many are hired to wait in line. So no, it's not even "just a phone" it's a job.
Brilliant!
Anyway, why doesn't Apple just stock the stores with 10,000+ iPhones? Maybe even 100,000+ given those crowds? If you got heaps of scalpers, let them buy to their heart's content, then just stock the shelves with more. You'd think Apple would be able to out-produce them by now... .
Also, they should have considered giving no pre-announcement given the propensity towards chaos with big build-ups for Apple in China. That way people will be slowed down by how fast they can get cash, so at the very least it will happen over a full day, if not a couple days.
And lastly, have a security team there at the beginning, and make sure to have a huge staff count on hand. Fill every table with iPhones and have extra check-outs for more processing capacity.
Surprised they ain't throwing green apples...
Or lemon ...
But I'm still amazed how do they come with eggs. Maybe ask their mom to stop by from shopping? and then BAM.
At this rate they should abandon selling the new 4s in physical stores in china for at least a while till the demand dies down a bit. Let all the crazed fans buy their 4s online. Much safer.
You don't if they allowed people to come into the store and use an apple computer to place an order and perhaps pay cash in the store that would solve all the problems you listed. few people would actually do that but simply allowing it would get Apple off the hook.
![[DL]](/data/avatars/m/410/410081.jpg?1266785706){kind=avatar}
Ha. Great punchline.
This is partially the fault of the Sanlitun Village (the mall). They have multiple security guards that will approach you in a second if you try to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk bordering the property, but they do absolutely nothing to stop scalpers.
Well, "absolutely nothing" isn't entirely true. They put up a sign in front of the apple store that says you can't resell apple products on the property. The sign makes for a convenient gathering place for the scalpers.
"Scalping" = exploitation of a healthy market.
What is the problem? If the so-called scalpers are more skilled than Apple at selling the iPhone for the price which people are willing to pay, then the market is supposed to reward them and not throw eggs at them.
What is the problem? If the so-called scalpers are more skilled than Apple at selling the iPhone for the price which people are willing to pay, then the market is supposed to reward them and not throw eggs at them.
It does not stop the demand, it just switches back to Hong Kong if they are not sold in China.
It does not matter how many iPhone 4s/4/3Gs Apple make and supply to the China market (or what they can buy in Hong Kong), then demand is never ending for now.
Huawei, Pantech, and ZTE will sell far more phones in China than Apple will.
But those are mostly cheapo Android handsets that aren't really being used as smartphones. They are really just touchscreen feature phones. Google can include them in their Android smartphone activation numbers, but the users aren't really doing more than talking, texting, maybe checking e-mail, a social network, taking a random picture. And they certainly aren't using Google for search: they are using Baidu.
Android handsets are a dime a dozen in China, most of those cheapo designs don't make it to overseas markets.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)
Holy free market batman! Aren't we only allowed one each here in the US? There's got to be a better way to deter scalpers.
Holy free market batman! Aren't we only allowed one each here in the US? There's got to be a better way to deter scalpers.
