China is a well-known country for faking products and producing the copy of almost every product. This will not be the first time when you will be hearing about China smuggling over 200,000 new iPads also called iPad 3 in their country from Hong Kong border. The New iPad will not be sold in any of the Apple Store or on streets, but it will be sold in the most famous Grey Market in China where everything is of smuggle and sold at high or at low rates. The rates for a particular device will be determined when they will start to sell the New iPads.
If we recall the launch of the New iPad, so it has been not more than four days since the New iPad was launched in 9 countries including USA, Hong Kong and other countries. Still China was missed out in the launch and in near future China is not seeming to get the iPad 3 officially. So, the grey market workers got lined up on the official launch day and some of them did a pre-order of the New iPad to smuggle them to China.
According to CUTV report quoted by Tech In Asia told:
The devices have been brought into the city by importers who ventured overseas to purchase them, with Hong Kong the favored choice due to its close proximity to Shenzhen. It is also said, however, that a significant number of devices were transferred over from the US, where pre-orders and a wider selection of retailers meant shorter queues for customers.
Several imports are reported to have come from the U.S.A. This time the retailers did not made long queues to get the New iPad, instead they did pre-order and allowed customers to take full advantage of the small queues.
The price of the new iPad depends on the market forces of the New iPad, that is supply and demand of the New iPad. The importers are believed to be keeping a yield of $20 per device and the price of the New iPad is said to be priced at $1,580 (10,000RMB). The price is also depending on the Chinese people who can pay up to $1,580 and more to get their early hands on the New iPad. This price is if of heavy demand. The price also varies from LTE/WIFI with GB. The greater the GB, the greater the price will be of the New iPad. When the Demand will start to diminish, the price is expected to decrease by $80 (500RMB). The estimation of the 200,000 iPads doesn’t represent the total number of iPads smuggled into China because it doesn’t include the supply into other cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai says The Next Web.
Some of the people believe that it is not worth it to update from iPad 2 to the New iPad because the size and the design are the same. Only some features are upgraded with a new iOS. This would be really interesting part to see about them when they see iPad 3 in the Apple Retail Store in few months. Till now there is no specific ETA for the official launch of the iPad 3 in China, but it is believed that Apple will be releasing the New iPad in China in next few months. Till then lets about the demand for the iPad 3 in Grey Market.