Yesterday iPad 2 was LAUNCHED officially also in China, the country from which Apple registers the highest revenues. Of course, in front of the Apple stores there were hundreds of people waiting to enter the store and buy the newest iDevice launched by Apple in March. The queues are similar to those in the USA, where among the Americans there were of course people from Chinese resellers who stood in queues day and night to buy tablets and resell them at much higher prices. Under these conditions, the stocks for the iPad 2 in China ran out in just 4 hours after the tablet's launch, which is perfectly normal considering that we are talking about a country 3 times larger, as well as the population, than the USA.
The interesting part is the way the Chinese keep the hawkers in check, that is, the message above was specially put for the hawkers to warn them not to sell tablets to the customers who were waiting in line. All the customers were nicely arranged in a separate queue flanked by law enforcement in order not to cause problems when entering the store. I think that Apple stores in the US/Europe have something to learn from here, so they would reduce the large number of customers dissatisfied with the Chinese who sleep next to Apple stores to buy tablets.
