[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEgO_iJKDGE[/youtube]
I told you last night that the iPhone 4S was officially launched in China and it seems that Apple had some problems at his store in Beijing. According to local journalists, most of the people in the queue were grandfathers who had come to buy iPhone terminals from Apple and resell them at much higher prices to the Chinese who did not get to buy a device. The grandparents are the ones who started arguing and finally got into a fight in front of the store, so the SWAT team of the Beijing police was called to calm the spirits.
There are over thousands of people at the scene and it seems like 99% of them are scalpers, according to local media reports. And according to our tipster, the scalpers are well organized, and they are divided into hundreds of teams, just like military forces. Each team includes 10-20 scalpers. Some of them even threw eggs at the glass door of the Apple store, while others threatened to assault the police.
It seems that there were several hundreds or maybe even over a thousand fans gathered in front of the store and some of them started throwing eggs at the main door of the Apple store asking the representatives to open earlier. In Asia, there are a lot of problems with retailers who buy enormous quantities of iDevices, leaving regular customers without the possibility of purchasing a terminal at a normal price. Apple doesn't really have a way to control the situation because no matter what they do they would find new ways to buy iPhones in industrial quantities.
UPDATE: An Apple representative stated that the stores in Beijing and Shanghai will not sell iPhone terminals at the moment due to the very large number of people in the queue.
We were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, to ensure the safety of our customers and our employees, iPhones will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being.
