Apple iPhone6 resellers still profiting in Hong Kong, two months on
Two months after launch, there's still a roaring street trade in iPhones
Resellers of Apple's new iPhone 6 models still doing a roaring trade on the streets of Hong Kong, more than eight weeks after the smartphones went on official sale in the city.
On the doorstep of the Apple store in the upmarket International Finance Centre shopping mall in Central, Mr Fang, as he asked to be identified, says he has earned an average of HK$30,000 a month since the iPhones went on sale. That's enough to keep him trading the smartphones until Christmas, he says.
"Business is all right, but it's not particularly lucrative," said Fang, a man in his 40s originally from Beijing. He said in a typical trade he would offer a vendor a premium of about HK$700 for an iPhone 6, which costs HK$5,588 from the Apple store. He would then resell it for about HK$200 profit.
On average, he said, he made a sale about every two hours, each day for the past two months. He added that the gold-coloured iPhones, a favourite with mainlanders, were worth more. The latest iPhones did not go on sale on the mainland until October 17.
Lau Chi-kong, of G-World Mobile who sells parallel imports, blamed the rampant hawking of iPhones on the limited supply from Apple, which had kept demand high.
He said his business was suffering as "[hawkers] don't have to pay rent, they are everywhere, and all they have to do is pay a little more [than us]".
Apple declined to comment. Its online store releases a limited number of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus for sale, but they are usually snapped up within minutes.
In front of the Apple store at Hysan Place in Causeway Bay, there are constantly about 50 hawkers - mostly Putonghua speakers - sitting on footstools and displaying suitcases containing new iPhones. They deal only in cash.
A security guard at the store said he had seen many people buy iPhones at the store and resell them immediately outside. "How many Hong Kong people actually use the iPhones they just bought? It looks something like 10 or 20 per cent," he said.
