The law of supply and demand ruled in Hong Kong, as Apple fans queued to be among the first in the world to get their hands on an iPhone 7, and some just as quickly sold them on for a 100 percent profit. There was a healthy queue outside the Causeway Bay Apple store in Hong Kong on Friday, but not everyone was in luck. Apple said on Thursday that the iPhone 7 Plus had sold out worldwide on pre-orders, also in jet back.
However as the old saying goes, where there is a will, and a ton of cash, there is a way. Just a few feet from the Apple store, scalpers armed with empty suitcases, fists full of cash and chairs in readiness for a long day, were offering as much as $1,700 for an iPhone 7 Plus, which was priced from 8,288 Hong Kong dollars ($849) in the store.
The scalpers, from mainland China and Hong Kong, were offering premiums ranging from hundreds to thousands of Hong Kong dollars, depending on the model and the time of purchase from Apple.
With some coveted models sold out, there was already a thriving re-sale market evident in Hong Kong, with local news site Apple Daily - no relation to Apple - reporting that a jet black iPhone 7 Plus 256 GB model was reselling at one Hong Kong mall for 15,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,933.21).
Apple’s suggested retail price for the handsets began at $649 for the iPhone 7 and $769 for the iPhone 7 Plus. Allan Chan, however, lucked out. The Hong Kong native was the first person in the special administrative region to get his hands on two of the new handsets, after he queued from around 7:30 a.m. HK/SIN at the Causeway Bay store.
He picked up two iPhone 7 Plus’ in pink for family members, but did not manage to get another iPhone 7 handset in black as he’d wanted. Elsewhere around the region, the hype around the iPhone appeared to be very much alive, even though reports suggested the turnout was smaller than in previous years, possibly due to the increasing popularly of pre-ordering.
