Katie MarsalWith the handset completely sold out in the four Apple retail stores in China, scalpers were waiting outside the locations, according to The Wall Street Journal, to offer an alternative. Those scalpers purchased many of the smartphones when they went on sale earlier in the week.
"Want to buy an iPhone 4?" the scalpers have reportedly been asking customers. "Come with us."
"Working in groups, the scalpers lead willing customers to an empty stairway in the same mall, where their cohorts keep stacks of iPhone 4s in the original packaging," the report said. "One scalper was offering the 16-gigabyte version of the device for 5,400 yuan, or about 795 dollars, a 10-percent mark-up over the sticker price."
The scalpers' handsets are said to be selling at a brisk pace, too, with one person revealing they had sold 10 handsets in just an hour. At least five groups were said to be working inside Beijing's Sanlitun Village mall.
The issue caused a scuffle with customers this week, according to MIC Gadget. Large crowds reportedly resulted in people being pushed into the cashiers' counter, and scalpers walked out with large bags full of iPhone 4s.
"According to sources, the real customers and the iPhone 4 scalpers had a fight in the Apple store," the report said. "A gang of scalpers were cutting the queue and some customers were fed up with the scalpers for buying large quantities of iPhone 4 and resell them outside the store. The police and Apple’s own security staff appeared to clean up the mess and due to the chaotic crowd, the store needs to be closed temporarily..."
The iPhone 4 went on sale in China on Saturday, drawing huge crowds of thousands of people, lined up to get their hands on Apple's latest smartphone. Carrier China Unicom received more than 200,000 preorders, and struggled to meet consumer demand.
A total of 100,000 handsets were said to have been sold in the first four days of availability, while the other 100,000 who preordered may have to wait until as late as the end of October to have their order fulfilled. Just 40,000 units were shipped for the first day of sales.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
32 Comments
That's crazy...
I think Apple seriously underestimated iPhone 4's demands in China. I'm a little puzzled as to why China Unicom took in 200K preorders when they only have 100K in stock?
Can't they just walk across the street to Foxconn and get some more?
10 handsets an hour dosnt seem very fast..
Hopefully this eases the demand at the Apple Stores in Canada. People are still lining up very early in the morning, everyday, without even knowing if the store received stock. They sell out quickly any day they do get stock. One of the reason is that they sell them unlocked and people from everywhere (not just China, but many places) are buying up units to sell abroad. I think they still have a 2 per customer limit, but there are reports of people lining up, buying two and then handing them over to a couple people waiting outside the store. One person I know watched about a dozen people hand over phones to one guy, get a handful of cash in exchange and then walk away.
Even if it is difficult to get one in China, the fact that they are available, even through scalpers, has got to be easy and cheaper than importing them from Canada.
10 handsets an hour dosnt seem very fast..
I don't know. I wouldn't mind a job where I make over $700 an hour.
When folks having waited hours in line to buy their iP4 get shoehorned by jerks ahead of them or that cut in line to buy loads of iP4 phones and deplete stock to then turn around and scalp them to those same customers is just plain wrong. Sorry... I'm for capitalism and entrepreneurship but this is just sleazy.
Doesn't Apple in China disallow folks from buying a load of phones at the same time? It won't deter scalpers I suppose when they have a group of people waiting in line, each buying their max allotment.
So sad.