Chinese consumers appetite for Apple products erupted into chaos today when a crowd that had queued through a sub-zero Beijing night for the first mainland Chinese sales of the iPhone 4S turned into a screaming, egg-hurling rage when Apple’s nerves cracked and it failed to open the shop as promised.
Apple also said that it would halt sales of its latest phones from its own Apple stores in China, though the devices would still be available online or from the many licensed Apple vendors across the country.
The protest, which involved streams of verbal abuse and scuffles with security guards and police, is the latest debacle for Apple in its fastest-growing market.
Previous incidents have centred on the same Apple store in Beijing where the sheer weight of customers, the confined design of the shopping mall and overwhelming demand for products that quickly sell out has led to furious confrontations with shop staff.
“To ensure the safety of our customers and employees, the iPhone will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being,” Apple later said in a statement.
Tensions were especially high on this occasion, said shoppers, because a brand new iPhone 4S was rapidly shaping up as the most desirable gift for Chinese New Year, which begins in just over a week’s time.
As with previous product launches, the iPhone 4S mob was a mixture of genuine fans of Apple products who would do anything to lay their hands on each new gadget and immigrant workers paid RMB100 (£10) apiece to queue on behalf of scalpers and organised into platoons of 30 people. On any given day, about a dozen scalpers lurk outside the Apple store in Beijing offering genuine Apple goods at inflated prices to shoppers who have just discovered that their desired item is sold out.
Apple had promised to open its doors at 7am for the launch but witnesses said that the plaza in front of the shop had descended into chaos at least two hours before that. In the pre-dawn dark, a once-controlled queue had disintegrated into a swirling mob of at least 1,000 and any semblance of order was lost as fighting broke out between the gadget-hungry crowds and police. Judging that this was not the moment to open up, Apple staff told the crowd through a megaphone that the launch was cancelled and advised them to go home — a move that drew howls of disbelief and further brawling.
Witnesses long familiar with the Apple store in Beijing said that they had never seen the scalpers and their minions organised with such military precision. By 1am, most of the queue appeared dominated by migrant workers and students in the temporary employ of the scalpers, all acting with “an amazing sense of discipline”. Each team was defined by coloured armbands and led by someone carrying a similarly coloured balloon.
Although Apple’s phones, music players and tablet computers are mostly assembled in China, delays with the local licensing process means the products are usually launched here some months after their release elsewhere.
Thousands of iPhone 4S models have already been smuggled into mainland China — chiefly from Hong Kong — since the phone’s release last year, but that has merely served to whet the local market’s appetite even further.
