Finding how US get rich from Chinese pockets...
Your ugly traders pick pocket your Chinese people altogether
In a Sina Tech survey, which received more than 100,000 votes in less than two hours while I was writing this post, 35 percent of respondents said they would choose the iPhone 5s, compared with 3 percents who went for the iPhone 5C. The rest said they would l drop both of them. As for the prices of the iPhone 5c models, 87 percent of respondents indicated the colored iPhone 5 range was priced way too expensive for China.
Price tag still too high for Chinese market
The official prices of iPhone 5s is identical to the iPhone 5 previously sold in China, where the low-end 16GB model is priced at 5,288 yuan (US$864) per set. However, the long-waited cheaper version, iPhone 5c, is priced at 4,488 yuan (US$733) for the 16GB model. This was the only "big surprise" to the Chinese consumers this time, though, not in a positive way, unfortunately.
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Most Hong Kong iPhone 5s to be smuggled into China
Analyst reveals massive grey market racket
By
Phil Muncaster, 21 Sep 2012
6
A whopping 70 per cent of shiny new iPhones and iPads bought in Hong Kong this year will be smuggled into China and sold on the grey market to feed the insatiable demand for all things Apple, according to analyst firm Forrester.
Beijing-based analyst Bryan Wang told
The Reg that the illegal trade in the fruity tech is down to two main reasons:
“Firstly, the launch of Apple products is always one quarter later in China than Hong Kong, so consumers can only get the products from grey market and the supply is mostly from Hong Kong,” he said. ”Second, the price in Hong Kong is approximately 15-20 per cent lower than in China.”
The Reg visited Shenzhen earlier this week and found the city’s tech stores awash with Apple products.
It wasn’t possible to confirm their provenance, but many traders were taking pre-orders for iPhone 5s for delivery next week, despite a launch date for the device in China not yet being announced.
Counterfeit iPhone shop, Shenzen, China
The revelation that up to 70 per cent of Apple kit sold in Hong Kong will be smuggled across the border is the more surprising given that Apple has, since the last iPad launch, instituted a
Reserve & Pickup system at its Hong Kong store.
Designed to
foil the scalpers who pour across the border to snap up sacks full of devices to take back and sell at a profit, the system requires users to register their details with a Hong Kong ID whereupon a lottery system is used to decide who gets the chance to buy their device the following day.
However, as local site
MIC Gadget reported in an exposé of the grey market this week, there are many Hong Kong locals who would like to make a bit of extra money – around HK$1,500 – HK$2,000 (£125-£170) for the iPhone 5 – by selling to a dodgy trader.
Hong Kong is something of a hub for the grey market anyway, so shipments are also flying in from Europe and the US, where they will be dispatched across the border.
It’s not just iGoods that are being bought and sold in this way to make a few entrepreneurial types rather rich, however. Here in Hong Kong there has been a clampdown of late on so-called ‘parallel traders’ buying cheaply on one side of the border and selling for a profit on the other.
More than 130 mainland Chinese were arrested this week on suspicion of violating immigration laws,
The Standard reported.
The land border with China is a tempting route on which to smuggle goods given the Hong Kong MTR and Shenzhen Metro services run all the way up to the border check-point. ®
