Apple wants everyone buying from them. Period. When I say them, I mean Apple or affiliates they have signed agreements with
This idea that Apple is helped by people re-selling is a bit laughable with nothing whatsoever behind it.
Let's say Apple sold 1 million iPads on launch weekend.
There were 600,000 user-purchasers (single ipad purchase), and 200,000 resellers, who bought and resold an average of 2 per reseller .
From the 600,000 user purchasers, Apple made $120,000,000 profit.
From the 200,000 resellers, Apple made $80,000,000 profit.
$200,000,000 profit.
Additionally, there are tons of people who don't want to resell who will purchase the iPad at a later date (reseller purchasers are time sensitive; user-purchaser purchasers are not).
Now let's say Apple finds a way to prevent reselling using some amazing iTechnology that makes the device explode if it enters another country prior to that country's launch.
Apple has lost $80,000,000 in profit from those 200,000 resellers who will no longer purchase. They'll still sell out, but that's 200,000 people who would have bought that won't anymore.
If Apple implemented a 1 per customer/CC policy, as suggested above, they'd make the same amount (likely in the form of more user-purchasers getting them, so it might be 800,000/200,000), but guess what? The resellers will just up the price accordingly! Instead of 400,000 iPads being resold, there will be 200,000 iPads being resold. Thus, instead of $1500 for a 64 gb 3g, you'd be looking at around $2500-$3000 for it. Is this a better system? If you're one of the 800,000 who got one, definitely. If not, you'd still be complaining about resellers.
Moral of the story? It's only a real problem for the impatient user-purchaser. Apple makes money (unlikely outweighed by the difference lost through sales to a foreign market*) from the resellers who aren't likely to purchase in 3 months, and makes money from the user-purchaser who gets boxed out by the reseller but will still purchase in 3 months. So where's the incentive for Apple to put a stop to reselling?
*this is an unknown, but the markup probably brings the cost sufficiently close to the retail price in those foreign markets that we're not talking about that huge of a difference.
The discussion was mainly based around the chinese resellers who are sending it to hong kong.
What's the problem here, exactly? Apple will still sell out whenever/if they launch in Hong Kong, and in the meantime, they're selling thousands (hundreds of thousands?) more than they otherwise would have in America.
Damn those evil unordinary Chinese customers willing to pay more...over there in Chinaland... Brings tears to my eyes. This seems to be where all the crying is going on, so I figured it was the right place for me.