"with one person revealing they had sold 10 handsets in just an hour"
ONE PERSON said this...with a 10% markup of $700, thats $700 profit, in one hour.
$700 an hour is a pretty good wage. Noted it said they work in groups, but still how big could those groups be? If its 10 people then they get $70 an hour each, still a pretty good wage. Especially in China.
Pretty good?
This is not skilled work. Anyone can be bought for probably $10 an hour (unemployed) to do this task. $70 an hour works out to $140,000 a year roughly. In the USA that would put you in the top 1%. What percentile do you think it puts you into in China where 500 million people earn below 10K per year?
Chinese in China and around the world put American capitalism to shame. Come to Asia. You'll see what making a buck is all about... At least Gordon Gekko wears nice suits and collects art.
I suppose Africa is more dicey, since instead of just Blackberries they also use semi-automatics.
MacRumors is reporting that all four stores in china are now requiring ID, limiting 1 per customer and requiring every phone to be opened and activated on the spot.
The sad thing is that if Apple truly loved their customers like Steve Jobs was boasting about during his antenna keynote, all of this nonsense could be stopped in a heartbeat. Don't sell unlocked phones in your retail stores, only sell them online, one per person, simple as that. You want your unlocked phone, order it, get it in the mail. You can only pay with cash? Pay for it in the store, get it in the mail. This way, those who truly value the product and want it for themselves can rest assured that those in line with them are all waiting for the same thing. The argument that they wouldn't sell as much doesn't stand up. It's in such demand, they would still sell all their stock that comes in. Think of how many hundreds if not thousands of people that walk into Apple stores every day asking for an iPhone only to be told they don't have any week after week. That's a lot of lost sales to potentially new or sitting on the fence casual walk in customers. The supply is just not there, and scalpers sure as hell don't help the situation.
LoL, so what happened? These guys walked in on opening day, bought like 100 phones, which the shop assistant promptly handed to them, they walk out the front door and start selling them at a 10% markup? Sounds like Apple should raise their prices.
The scalper issue in the store seems like an inside job since it's unusual for an Apple retail store to remove the purchase limit of 2 iPhone per customer to be unlimited. Who ever made that decision most likely is suspended or fired since it caused a riot in the store which involved police.
Comments
Sounds like the smart way to sell them, to avoid scalpers, when supply can't meet demand.
Yeah if only Apple had ever thought about doing it that way!
Ahh, but you are forgetting something:
"with one person revealing they had sold 10 handsets in just an hour"
ONE PERSON said this...with a 10% markup of $700, thats $700 profit, in one hour.
$700 an hour is a pretty good wage. Noted it said they work in groups, but still how big could those groups be? If its 10 people then they get $70 an hour each, still a pretty good wage. Especially in China.
Pretty good?
This is not skilled work. Anyone can be bought for probably $10 an hour (unemployed) to do this task. $70 an hour works out to $140,000 a year roughly. In the USA that would put you in the top 1%. What percentile do you think it puts you into in China where 500 million people earn below 10K per year?
I suppose Africa is more dicey, since instead of just Blackberries they also use semi-automatics.
glad to see that americans aren't the only idiots in the world...
MacRumors is reporting that all four stores in china are now requiring ID, limiting 1 per customer and requiring every phone to be opened and activated on the spot.
Welcome Apple to retail in Asia.
10 handsets an hour dosnt seem very fast..
That's just one guy...!
All your capitalism are belong to Chinese
That's large crow, the hugest crow of all I've seen in my life.
$199 (iPhone 4 16GB) + $70 (1 month payment) + $325 (ETF) - $10 (1 month of usage)
= $584
Which is considerably less than $700 for unlocked iPhone 4.