Rumor: Chinatown Express Delivers iPhones into China
Southern Daily, 12/11/07
According to the owner of a stall at one of Guangzhou's well known gray-market mobile phone markets, most iPhone imports are coming through a company called Chinatown Express. The company is based out of Chinatown in America and has a dedicated transportation team that uses a series of unknown channels to import iPhones into China on a large scale, with each delivery of iPhones containing several hundred phones.
Although the price of gray-import iPhones has already dropped from an initial price of RMB 12,000 down to RMB 5,500, sales volumes for the phone are still steady. According to statistics gathered from an internal investigation at the market, approximately 100,000 iPhones have been sold there over a three month period.
Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) third-quarter report stated that out of the 1.39 mln iPhones that had been sold, roughly 17% had been unlocked by the buyers, and these unlocked iPhones have quickly found their way into markets around the world.
Keywords: Apple AAPL iPhone Guangzhou black market mobile phone wireless
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