With the iPad and iPhone in such high consumer demand constantly, the idea of buying a bunch and selling them at inflated prices – scalping – is nothing new. But what is surprising is the fact that up to 95% of all China’s White iPhone 4’s may be controlled by this “grey market.”
From CultofMac:
When the iPad 2 debuted back in March, half of all the people waiting in line outside of the 5th Avenue Store were Asian scalpers looking to ship the iPad 2 overseas to China and Hong Kong.
Hysterically, the same thing is happening again now that the white iPhone 4is here… but it’s happening in China, where as many as 95% of all people camped outside of the Beijing Apple Store are scalpers.. And they are brazenly reselling the white iPhone 4 to real prospective buyers right outside of the store… at a 200-500 yuan (or between $33 and $77) markup per device.
While this markup isn’t as extreme as it has sometimes been seen in the US and other markets, this news is still quite concerning, as it ends up being bad for consumers in the long run, and also bad for Apple. What’s worse is that not all the profit is generated merely by reselling the iPhone either: another way money is made is by opening up the iPhone 4, replacing the battery with an inferior one, and then selling the real iPhone battery to knock-off manufacturers.
Just a bit of proof that there is still evil in the world.
