Apple's online sales arrangements for the new iPad - under which the gadgets were not available from its own shop except by pre-order - have failed to eradicate scalping on the launch day yesterday as the product was also available at other outlets where professional queuers lined up early to make a quick profit.
Groups of South Asian buyers, told not to queue up outside Apple's flagship store in Central, turned to 84 other stores across the city to buy the product. After chaos during last year's launch of the iPhone 4S, when thousands of buyers besieged its store in the hope of being among the first to own the new gadget, Apple only accepted pre-orders through its Hong Kong website.
But Efe, 26, a Pakistani who queued up outside DG Lifestyle Store in Times Square, Causeway Bay, said he was buying the iPad for a 'friend' who had a shop in Tsim Sha Tsui.
He said his friend would sometimes give him 'several hundred dollars' and sometimes even more.
'But sometimes he just treats me to a meal,' he said. Others were paid HK$600 to HK$700 a day to join the queue, he said. Efe was seen talking to another South Asian man who collected 40 to 50 iPads from people in the queue but who claimed they were for his own use.
The Causeway Bay branch of electronic appliance shop Fortress gave out 100 tickets to early birds at 8am and by 11am had sold its entire stock of iPads. Rival chain Broadway required customers to buy a HK$1,990 sleeve together with the iPad.
Outside Apple's flagship store in Central IFC, some 40 to 50 people who had successfully pre-ordered iPads online queued up to wait for the store to open at 8am.