It’s a well-known fact around the world right now, that Apple has released the iPhone 6 and 6 plus. After all, it was officially announced over a week ago. First weekend sales have already topped the iPhone 5s/5c sales with over 10 million iPhone 6’s sold within the first few days of release. Line-ups of people who waited hours for the iPhone 6/6 plus were turned away empty handed.
Image Source: Bloomberg Tech News
Meanwhile, the Chinese were exempt from the long-awaited release date as Apple has yet to get the license to sell them in China(despite the fact that over 200,000 people in Chinese factories worked on the iPhone). This has prompted a flood of iPhones on the so-called gray market. The new iPhone 6/6 plus, often shown as a status symbol, has turned into a large opportunity for individual sellers, who lined up that opening day in various countries around the world. While Apple has been unable to access China, resellers have been selling the iPhones at a 200-300% markup.
This is a display of the effects of government intervention on a market. While Apple loses some of the sales and profit they could have gained from access to China, the demand for iPhones(particularly the gold iPhone 6 plus) remains high. With the supply of iPhones so low, the price, naturally rises forcing Chinese consumers to pay a larger sum for an iPhone that could have been easily bought cheaper at an Apple store. While Apple has had impeccable sales numbers and still gains profit from the consumers planning to sell their iPhones, they lack what they could have gained from their market in China.