USA to blame for Scalping?

Ebay is one outlet for reselling, and it makes sense that Americans would prefer to use it because of its reliability. I doubt Chinese resellers are putting them on ebay instead of selling them in retail stores. Thus, this limited snapshot is horribly skewed.

 

scalpers gonna scalp. :/

 

to avoid this kind of mistake, apple need to launch new products globally as same time as the US launch day, but it means the stocks for US are becoming less in quantity.

i'm sure scalpers who imported the iPad 2 themselves are a lot more than sales in ebay.

 

Who cares? I guess only those waiting for an iPad. Next time I go out to eat and have to wait more than 30 minutes for my food, I'll post a new thread and wonder who in the restaurant order after me and was served before me.

 

I don't think Chinese scalpers would sell their iPads to Hong Kong/China through eBay. Chinese users mostly use taobao.com and in Hong Kong it's Yahoo Auctions who owns the market.

 

Meaningless data. It doesn't account for the non-US ebay buyers using a US address via a service that then ships items to their overseas address.

With no information to account for what proportion of those sales to US addresses are subsequently shipped overseas, the data shown doesn't speak to how many units remain in the US.

 

WTF? Another scalper thread?

 

The chart simply shows that Americans use eBay to purchase the iPad 2 far more than other countries use eBay to purchase the iPad 2. What it doesn't tell you at all is the total number of devices resold, what channels were used, and how many units went through each channel. There could have been 100,000 units that were sold through a system of street market vendors in a particular country and this chart wouldn't even show it existed.

 

eBay isn't the only place to traffic in iPads. In fact, I'd bet most of the "scalpers" don't sell on eBay. There are planes that depart from most major cities that go to other major world metropolises.

In fact, any organized gray market syndicate is going to pay people to buy the iPad2 and bring it to a central location. Once they've collected enough they'll find a way to smuggle them onto a plane or boat so that they evade customs upon landing or docking. Or maybe the customs official is a "friend" -- these are headed to closed governments so that isn't too hard.

That said, I think the whole gray market story is overblown. It's a convenient target for those that can't find an iPad 2. If it's true that 2.5 million have been sold to-date then I doubt gray marketeers even account for 2% of that number.

 

So, let's update our list of people and places to blame

1) Asians
2) United States
3) Apple
4) ?

 

That accounts for 12,000 iPads. Reports are saying Apple sold 2.5 million in March. 12,000 is less than a half of a percent, not really credible numbers if you ask me.

 

hehhee