Apple has not yet officially launched the iPad in Asia, but that hasn’t stopped a booming “grey market” trade in the world’s most talked-about high-tech gadget.
The company said on Monday that it had sold 1 million iPads in just 28 days, and thousands of those clever little black slabs of glass and aluminum made it to Asia.
From Singapore to Seoul, Bangkok to Beijing, iPads are on sale — for a substantial mark-up on the US retail price.
PHOTO: AFP
In Hong Kong, computer malls are doing brisk business.
“We get them from the US,” said Carl Lee, a salesman at a computer shop in Mongkok Computer Center. “But if you want one, get one quick — Apple is restricting buyers to only two iPads per credit card in the States and we don’t know how much longer we can get them.”
The store could get 15 of the basic 16 gigabyte (GB) models “within a day,” he said, for HK$5,700 (US$734) each.
The same model retails in the US for US$499.
Another salesman, Jay at Concept Digital in the same computer mall, offered to get up to 30 of the same model “within half an hour” for around US$710 each.
At the Low Yat Plaza, one of Kuala Lumpur’s centers for cheap electronics and gadgets, every other mobile phone stall had some iPads for sale.
“We have the 16GB, 32GB or 64GB version, how many do you want?” vendor Caryn Lee asked.
Prices ranged from US$750 to US$1,100.
“Our shop is quite big so we have been able to bring in several hundred over the last month,” Lee said.
Most sellers said they got their iPads from a few dealers with small retail shops in the US, and one said Apple’s failure to supply the device outside the country was fueling the unofficial trade.
“It is not illegal to sell the iPad and if Apple does not bring them in to Malaysia, we will continue to do so as the demand is very, very high,” said phone dealer Low Fun Meng, who sold 70 iPads last week.
Dozens of vendors are selling iPads at stalls in Bangkok’s MBK mall for similar prices.
The stallholders are not the only ones doing the selling: two Americans in the mall held a duffel bag with four iPads they had brought over from the US in the hope of cashing in on the grey market boom.
“We’ll make about 100 bucks a pop, 150 bucks a pop. It defrays the cost of the one I got myself,” one of the men said. “It’s a hassle bringing them over. I had to whack out three grand on my credit card to get them.”
The other man said: “You know, it’s a risk. If you get stopped at customs, you’ll have to pay a duty that pretty much takes away your profit.”
The iPad is manufactured in China and Taiwan, so the ones on sale in Beijing and Taipei have had a long journey home.
Alan Lee, who owns a small electronics shop in Taipei’s Guanghua Digital Plaza, had sold out.
“The iPad is the most popular Apple product ever. We’re approached by customers every day asking about the availability,” he said.
The level of demand in the US since the iPad’s launch on April 3 forced Apple to delay the tablet’s international release by a month.
“Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said on Monday.
The first non-grey market iPads will be on sale at the end of this month in Japan and Australia.
But the rest of the Asia-Pacific region will have to wait — and Apple won’t yet say for how long.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
Sales RecORD: Hon Hai’s consolidated sales rose by about 20 percent last quarter, while Largan, another Apple supplier, saw quarterly sales increase by 17 percent IPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday reported its highest-ever quarterly sales for the third quarter on the back of solid global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, said it posted NT$1.85 trillion (US$57.93 billion) in consolidated sales in the July-to-September quarter, up 19.46 percent from the previous quarter and up 20.15 percent from a year earlier. The figure beat the previous third-quarter high of NT$1.74 trillion recorded in 2022, company data showed. Due to rising demand for AI, Hon Hai said its cloud and networking division enjoyed strong sales
RSS