Apple iPhone6 resellers still profiting in Hong Kong, two months on

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.

When Apple started selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus on September 19, resellers were buying and selling them for premium prices outside the Apple stores in Central, Causeway Bay and Kowloon Tong. Today, although demand has slowed, there is still money to be made for some street resellers, as supply from Apple stores is limited.

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.