Huge profits and surprises before iPhone 6 launch

On the evening of September 10, Apple released the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. When Li Lei, a Zhongguancun digital retailer who stayed up late to follow the press conference, found that mainland China was not on the first list of new products to be launched, he was ecstatic. He knew that the iPhone 6 could make much more money than the iPhone 5s which was launched at the same time.

On the afternoon of September 18, when the reporter went to Zhongguancun to inquire about the price of iPhone 6 parallel imports, Li Lei said generously that the lowest configuration of iPhone 6 (16GB version) starts at 10,000 yuan. In the past week, his regular customers alone have already booked more than 20 units from him. "The iPhone 6 will arrive tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. If it is delayed for a while, it will be evening. It will be available on the 20th."

In Zhongguancun, there are many people like Li Lei who do iPhone parallel import business. Qian Liang has been selling Apple, Samsung and HTC phones in Zhongguancun for many years and is a larger parallel import distributor. But this year's iPhone parallel import made him a little confused. Before the iPhone 6 was officially released, he heard that his peers in the village got the iPhone 6 in advance and sold it at a sky-high price, which confused him.

Qian Liang saw a report in Hong Kong that a mobile phone store called "Chaole Telecom" sold two 128 GB iPhone 6 Plus before the official sale, each priced at 30,000 yuan. Perhaps because he was afraid of being traced, the mobile phone store owner refused to disclose the source of the mobile phones. This made him want to talk to the store owner, "I don't care about the price, I just want to get in touch with them so that they can deliver the new products as soon as possible next time they are released. This is a matter of face."

An industry insider revealed to reporters that the batch of iPhone 6s that flowed to Zhongguancun in advance came from the United States and Australia, and there were about 10 units in the entire Zhongguancun. As for the channels, there is no particularly accurate statement at present, but one thing is certain, Apple's channel control power is no longer as strong as before.

Scalpers rush to order

A week before the iPhone was released, if Li Lei and Qian Liang were waiting for the iPhone 6 to arrive in Zhongguancun, the opening of pre-orders for the iPhone 6 in Hong Kong had the iPhone parallel importers in Shenzhen and Guangzhou very busy.

As one of the first regions to launch the iPhone 6, Hong Kong opened online pre-orders twice on September 12 and 14 after the iPhone 6 was released. This year, when verifying identity for the iPhone 6 purchase, Apple's Hong Kong official website added the mainland resident ID card and Hong Kong and Macau Pass, which means that mainland residents can also participate in the purchase.

Guangzhou and Shenzhen are relatively close to Hong Kong, so they are in a great position to grab the iPhone 6. "They register dozens of accounts each and rush to buy online as soon as the pre-order starts," said an insider. Some parallel importers even found their IT programmer friends and asked them to develop pre-order software to ensure that they can grab as many new iPhones as possible.

Apple also has a trick. In order to curb the behavior of scalpers, the reservation for in-store pickup requires a local Hong Kong mobile phone number to send a specific string to a designated number, and then use the returned reservation code to make an appointment for the self-pickup service. The mobile phone number cannot be used to make reservations again on this page after the reservation is successfully made. However, scalpers still have ways to counter the trick.

The size of these "scalpers" varies. Some people only buy 2 units, one for their own use and one for each sale. Some buy 8 or 10 units, some buy dozens, and of course, there are also those who buy thousands. As a result, every time the pre-order is opened, within just 15 minutes, the Apple official website will show that it is out of stock.

Today, after the iPhone 6 was officially released, these scalpers or their staff went to the Apple store in the IFC shopping center in Central, Hong Kong to get the goods, or waited at the door of the Apple store, waiting for users who had already pre-ordered iPhones to get the new products, and then bought them for a few hundred yuan. The iPhone 6s that they pre-ordered and bought at a premium were put into empty suitcases by scalpers and quickly passed through the border in Hong Kong to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. "This afternoon, many retail store owners will wait at the big distributors, and once the goods arrive, they will take them away in a blink of an eye, which is very similar to the scene of drug dealers trading." The above-mentioned person described it this way.

Except for the first day of official sales, the parallel import chain of iPhone can be described as an agency system. The channel generally has three levels of agents. The first level is the Hong Kong agent, the second level is the distributor in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and the third level is a smaller and more segmented channel, a retail store. Among them, the Shenzhen distributor will send part of the supply to Beijing, and the digital sellers in Beijing Zhongguancun will sell it to users.

iPhone parallel imports at seafood prices

This year, Apple changed its previous habit of releasing new products and released two large-screen mobile phones at once, the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. The retail price in Hong Kong is HK$5,588 (RMB 4,470) for the former and HK$6,388 (RMB 5,040) for the latter. The price difference between the two is about RMB 500.

When the iPhone 6 was first released, the price of the parallel-imported iPhone could be described as the price of seafood, which changed almost every day. In recent days, Tencent Technology visited various retail stalls in Zhongguancun and found that the prices of the pre-ordered iPhone 6 varied.

A few days earlier, when the iPhone 6 leaked from abroad, the price of the low-end version of the iPhone 6 was around 13,000-14,000 yuan, and the high-end version was around 20,000 yuan. The iPhone 6 Plus started at 20,000 yuan. Compared with the retail price of the iPhone 6 in Hong Kong, it can be described as a sky-high price.

On September 18, merchants in Shenzhen Huaqiangbei quoted the price of the iPhone 6 16GB version at 9,200 yuan. The high-end version is more than 10,000 yuan. The high-end version of the iPhone 6 Plus is 18,000 yuan.

Qian Liang gave his regular customers a relatively reasonable price, 8,500 yuan for the low-end iPhone 6 and 9,500 yuan for the low-end iPhone 6 Plus. "After adding labor and shipping costs, I don't make much money. It's not the huge profit I imagined."

During this period, he only reserved for friends and did not intend to keep one for himself, mainly because he felt it was too expensive and was reluctant to part with it. "It is still quite expensive now, but the price will stabilize after a while," he said.

Parallel import channels gradually decline

Qian Liang has been running a stall in Zhongguancun for six or seven years. He started his stall in Zhongguancun almost at the same time as the first generation of iPhone was launched. He recalled that the sales of parallel-imported iPhones were not good at first, and the turning point was the launch of iPhone 4 in 2010. "The iPhone 5c is an iPhone 5 with a different shell. Compared with the iPhone 5s, the sales of the iPhone 5c are very poor."

He believes that this time Apple is indeed releasing two phones, which is different from the last time Apple released the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c at the same time. He predicts that the iPhone 6 Plus will be more popular. Wang Zhidi, the boss of Geek Digital, who used to be a mobile phone editor, gave a more firm judgment: "This year's iPhone will sell better, and the choice between the two large screens must be the iPhone 6 Plus."

He gave two reasons for his optimism: one is that Apple has released a large-screen iPhone, and the other is that Samsung and other products are no longer a threat to Apple in terms of high-end models. "In the past, I was torn between Samsung and Apple, but now I don't have to worry about it."

However, with the rise and fall of mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung, and HTC, the mobile phone business in Zhongguancun is more depressed than before.

This week, when Tencent Technology visited Wang Zhidi's store, they unexpectedly discovered that while they were selling mobile phones and other digital products, they were also starting to sell steam cigarettes. "This thing has become popular in the past two years, and it costs three or four hundred yuan each." When he was free, he played with the heating wire of the steam cigarette. "Otherwise, I would be bored to death."

He feels that due to the impact of e-commerce channels and the reasons of mobile phone manufacturers, the market is not like before, with all kinds of machines. "At first, it was Dopod, then Nokia, after 2008, HTC, and later Apple and Samsung. In the past, the market was popular for a while to replace single-core mobile phones with dual-core phones, and then for a while to replace dual-core phones with quad-core phones. Now the trend of replacing mobile phones has passed."

Qian Liang also revealed that "profits are very thin now, and more than 100 yuan per unit is good enough."

The changes in the profit "backers" of these digital dealers also reflect the replacement of flagship mobile phones in the mobile phone industry in recent years and even the changes in the mobile phone industry. On the afternoon of the 18th, when Tencent Technology asked about the market and left Zhongguancun E World, it saw an empty counter with the words "Connecting People Nokia" on the basement floor being put aside, which seemed to remind us again that the era of Nokia's "technology is people-oriented" is gradually fading away.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.