China Daily:
China Unicom, the country’s second-largest telecom operator by subscriber numbers, said it has large stocks of Apple Inc’s iPhone 4S handsets available for purchase.
That’s despite Apple’s Chinese stores halting supplies of the device and scalpers charging a markup of as much as 1,000 yuan ($158) for each handset.
Apple announced on Friday that the iPhone 4S will not be available in stores in Beijing and Shanghai “for the time being”, after angry shoppers pelted the company’s store in the capital’s upmarket Sanlitun area with eggs and quarrels broke out between scalpers and security guards.
I’m sure that Apple fully understood what they were doing when they put the safety of their staff ahead of selling phones .
I wonder how Apple will start selling them in China to avoid problems when they decide to start selling them. Perhaps without any notice at all, just having them one day, would be safe?
Maybe, but the scalpers will surely have posted people on watch duty outside the stores.
These people have a lot of criminal energy and they’re putting it to “good” use.
I think at this point buying new Apple devices from Apple in China has become as bad as buying train tickets shortly prior to the Chinese new year.