New iPads change hands for instant profits in Hong Kong
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Hong Kong - New iPads were changing hands Friday outside the Apple store in Hong Kong for hundreds of US dollars more than their purchase price on their first day of sale.
Customers had to register online Thursday and were picked at random and offered the chance to spend an hour in the store Friday to buy up to two of the new iPads.
Outside the store, one trader bought two 32-gigabyte iPads for the equivalent of 1,700 US dollars from a customer who picked them up for the equivalent of 1,200 US dollars, according to the South China Morning Post.
A buyer from Guangzhou in southern China claiming to represent an unnamed VIP offered the equivalent of 2,300 US dollars to the first buyer to emerge from the store, the website said. He was turned down.
Another buyer said he travelled from Kazakhstan to buy iPads but found no takers all morning as he offered 645 US dollars for each iPad to people emerging from the store.
The online registration system avoided the chaotic scenes when the iPhone 4S was launched in Hong Kong in November. People queued for days and police had to deal with skirmishes over queue-jumping.//DPA
