Smugglers ship 200,000 Western iPads to ONE Chinese city - and charge up to £1000 a tablet
Apple's new iPad may have been made in China, but has yet to go on sale in the Far East.
That however hasn't stopped over 200,000 units being shipped back to Shenzhen, a city bordering on Hong Kong.
Smugglers are believed to be profiting around £13 for each device sold which will be launched in the People's Republic on Friday.
Sellers are demanding as much as £995 for those desperate to be get their hands on the tablet, ahead of the March 23rd release date.
However that price is expected to drop significantly when the new model goes on sale to the Chinese public.
A large number of devices were also dispatched from the U.S, where several retailers meant shorter queues for customers.
Other cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.are believed to have been supplied with large quantities of the new apple device.
Similarly, in the UK, Black market gangs paid as much as £300 to jump the queue in order to buy bulk purchases of the new tablets so they could then be sold on at a profit.
Noah Green, a 16-year-old student from Stanmore, North-West London, had been fourth in the queue at Apple’s flagship store in Regent Street, London, but said someone had paid him £300 to move back.
Before going through the door, he said: ‘It is worth it. I am still 18th in the queue so I will be one of the first to buy an iPad. I am going to sell it though and earn some money.’
Many appeared to have been paid £10 or £20 to wait in line for hours on behalf of a third party.
Some buyers had their hands full of shopping bags filled with products. One was even pictured wheeling items out on a trolley.
At Westfield shopping centre, in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, a number of buyers were seen handing purchases – still in their shrink-wrapped boxes – to a waiting group of Eastern European men
One said: ‘We’re just buying and selling, we’re not doing anything illegal. We bought them and we sold them.’At Covent Garden, men were seen handing over money, collecting receipts and organising scores of people queuing.One agent, who gave his name as Martin, said: ‘I hope to get around 70 iPads today.
I will be sending them on to India.’ The new iPad will not be on sale officially in India for at least another week.Stores were given only a limited supply of the new device and many had sold out by mid-afternoon.
This allowed buyers who did manage to get one the opportunity to make a quick profit by selling them via eBay.
Sellers on the auction website were offering the 16GB version, which connects to the web via wifi, for as much as £562.79 – a mark-up of £163.79, or 41 per cent, on the official price of £399.
The scenes were repeated around the world. In Paris, one customer, Athena May, said: ‘I don’t think it’s worth the price but I guess I’m a victim of society.’
That however hasn't stopped over 200,000 units being shipped back to Shenzhen, a city bordering on Hong Kong.
Smugglers are believed to be profiting around £13 for each device sold which will be launched in the People's Republic on Friday.
Sellers are demanding as much as £995 for those desperate to be get their hands on the tablet, ahead of the March 23rd release date.
However that price is expected to drop significantly when the new model goes on sale to the Chinese public.
A large number of devices were also dispatched from the U.S, where several retailers meant shorter queues for customers.
Other cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.are believed to have been supplied with large quantities of the new apple device.
Similarly, in the UK, Black market gangs paid as much as £300 to jump the queue in order to buy bulk purchases of the new tablets so they could then be sold on at a profit.
Noah Green, a 16-year-old student from Stanmore, North-West London, had been fourth in the queue at Apple’s flagship store in Regent Street, London, but said someone had paid him £300 to move back.
Before going through the door, he said: ‘It is worth it. I am still 18th in the queue so I will be one of the first to buy an iPad. I am going to sell it though and earn some money.’
Many appeared to have been paid £10 or £20 to wait in line for hours on behalf of a third party.
Some buyers had their hands full of shopping bags filled with products. One was even pictured wheeling items out on a trolley.
At Westfield shopping centre, in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, a number of buyers were seen handing purchases – still in their shrink-wrapped boxes – to a waiting group of Eastern European men
One said: ‘We’re just buying and selling, we’re not doing anything illegal. We bought them and we sold them.’At Covent Garden, men were seen handing over money, collecting receipts and organising scores of people queuing.One agent, who gave his name as Martin, said: ‘I hope to get around 70 iPads today.
I will be sending them on to India.’ The new iPad will not be on sale officially in India for at least another week.Stores were given only a limited supply of the new device and many had sold out by mid-afternoon.
This allowed buyers who did manage to get one the opportunity to make a quick profit by selling them via eBay.
Sellers on the auction website were offering the 16GB version, which connects to the web via wifi, for as much as £562.79 – a mark-up of £163.79, or 41 per cent, on the official price of £399.
The scenes were repeated around the world. In Paris, one customer, Athena May, said: ‘I don’t think it’s worth the price but I guess I’m a victim of society.’
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