While the Chinese are wild for Apple’s new gold iPhone 5s, the shortage of the device is driving desperate Chinese consumers who subscribe to Raffi’s belief that “gold is best,” to buy inexpensive gold stickers and skins to give their iPhones the Midas touch.
The Wall Street Journal, via 9to5Mac:
“Dear, you don’t need to sell your kidney for the new iPhone,” one of the ads said.“Instead of paying 5288 yuan (the retail price of the 16-gigabyte iPhone 5S in China), you only need to spend 35 yuan to make your iPhone 5 look like a golden iPhone 5S in seconds.”
Numerous retailers in the country have begun offering gold skins and stickers for the iPhone 5 and 5s, which allow buyers to give their iPhone the look of gold for as little as USD $2.
The WSJ notes that online retailers have sold thousands of gold iPhone skins in less than a month.
The new gold iPhone 5s is in limited supply around the world, with even Apple’s own retail stores having only an extremely limited supply on hand on launch day.
Chinese consumers consider the gold iPhone 5s as a status symbol with local Chinese media referring to the gold 5s model as “Tuhao Jin” or “local tyrant’s gold.
Apple is reportedly increasing the production of the gold iPhone 5s by one-third to meet the demand for the device. Orders in Apple’s online store still list “October” as an estimated shipping date for most countries.
If you simply can’t wait, there is a selection of gold “skins” available for your iPhone 5/5s on Amazon.com.
