By Wayne Ma And Lorraine Luk
HONG KONG-- Apple Inc.'s new iPhone has become an object of more
than just desire in Asia, where tussles broke out near stores
selling the phones, and police in Hong Kong over the weekend foiled
what they called a suspected attempt to smuggle a stash of the
gadgets out of the city.
Behind the incidents is the extreme imbalance between the number
of iPhones available in the region and the demand, a gap made
larger this year because Apple hasn't even started selling its
latest smartphones--the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which went on sale in
many other countries Friday--in one of its largest markets, China.
Chinese state media attributes the delay to regulatory issues.
Apple spokespeople didn't reply to requests for comment.
Tight supplies have created lucrative arbitrage opportunities
for scalpers, who can resell the new iPhones in China for almost
double their retail price, according to third-party resellers in
Hong Kong. In the tech-hungry Asian-Pacific region, the phones are
on sale only in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Australia.
Hong Kong authorities said Sunday that they foiled an apparent
attempt to smuggle 3 million Hong Kong dollars ($387,000) worth of
high-end electronics--including at least 138 new iPhones--that were
being loaded onto a speedboat in a rural coastal area opposite the
Chinese shore. Customs officials said several men fled on the boat
when approached by law-enforcement officers, leaving behind 15
boxes that also included 1,890 hard drives and 16,235
computer-memory chips. A spokesman for the customs department said
Monday that the investigation was ongoing.
Social media was full of reports on Friday of line-cutting by
presumed scalpers in Japan and Singapore. In Singapore, officers
responded to several calls before the devices went on sale early
Friday morning, after at least six malls became concerned about the
number of people gathering outside Apple's third-party retailers, a
spokeswoman at the Singapore Police Force said. At least one of the
calls was due to a dispute over line cutting, according to people
familiar with the matter.
Stock quickly sold out. As of Monday, the new iPhones were
unavailable through Apple's two official stores and website in Hong
Kong. Several third-party retailers and mobile-phone operators in
Singapore--where no official Apple stores exist--said they ran out
of stock over the weekend and that it wasn't clear when their
supplies would be replenished. In Japan, Apple's website said
orders would take between three and four weeks to deliver.
Driving much of the iPhone 6 hunger is China, which has become
increasingly important to Apple's bottom line. Apple's sales in
Greater China, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, grew 28% during
the fiscal third quarter ended June 28 to $5.94 billion, making up
nearly 16% of its total revenue. As a reflection of this
importance, China was one of the first countries last year to begin
selling the iPhone 5S. China's official Xinhua News Agency said
last week that the new iPhones cleared two major regulatory hurdles
but still needed a network-access license before official sales
could begin.
On the gray market for scalped iPhones, the price premium for
the most expensive model, the 128-gigabyte version of the iPhone 6
Plus, jumped to more than $1,000 on Friday, according to phone
retailers in Mongkok, a bustling neighborhood that is well known to
anyone shopping for unlocked iPhones and other gray-market
electronics.
Jay Lam, a Hong Kong shop manager, left Apple's store in
Causeway Bay on Friday with a big smile on his face as he picked up
two gold iPhone 6 Pluses. Mr. Lam said he planned to sell the two
phones for HK$20,000 each ($2,600), making a handsome profit from
the official retail price of HK$8,088. Gray market vendors with big
suitcases could be seen counting money outside the store. Most of
them were interested in collecting the iPhone 6 Plus, especially
the gold model, which they said had strong demand from China.
The mania to get a new iPhone wasn't limited to scalpers.
Several of Apple's retail partners in Hong Kong offered their best
customers a chance to reserve iPhone 6s. Luxury department-store
chain Lane Crawford invited 1,000 loyal customers to reserve and
purchase the new iPhone at two of its stores in Hong Kong on
Friday. On Monday, a spokeswoman for Lane Crawford said that every
single customer took up the offer and that it sold out of its
supply.
Write to Wayne Ma at wayne.ma@wsj.com and Lorraine Luk at
lorraine.luk@wsj.com
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