Chinese shoppers scooping up grey market iPads
BEIJING: Technology-mad Chinese shoppers are paying a huge mark-up for Apple’s new iPad on the grey market. The trend developed only days after the device
went on sale in the United States of America .
Shops in one of Hong Kong’s labyrinthian computer malls were charging as much as 950 US dollars for the tablet device, well above the US retail price of 500 US dollars.
“These babies have been selling really well,” said Vincent, a salesman at Manu Digi Creation in the Wan Chai Computer Centre. Simultaneously, his colleagues boxed several iPads for avid customers.
“I have sold at least
between eight and 10
pieces everyday since Monday. Lots of places are
being sold out — people
really like them,” said Vincent, who declined to give his full name.
Sales staffers at the nearby Cyber Technology said that the device would cost about $950 per piece, with no room for negotiation. “There’s no margin - fixed price,” one salesman said.
Sales of the device were not as brisk at Hong Kong’s popular Sincere Podium mall, in Mong Kok, where the iPad was retailing for about $750, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
One shop owner was quoted as saying the iPad was only “half as popular” as Apple’s iPhone, which went on sale on the grey market in 2007.
At the time, the iPhone sold for $1,300, or twice its US retail price, two years before its official launch in China, the paper said.
Hong Kong and mainland China have vibrant grey markets with a huge array
of legitimate products
available but with a higher price tag.
Apple has not said when it will officially launch the iPad in China.
US consumers have snapped up 450,000
iPads since they went on sale on Saturday, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said on Thursday.
“We’re making (iPads)
as fast as we can,” he
said. “Evidently we can’t make enough of them yet
so we are going to have
to try harder.”
