Apple Actually Meeting Demand for iPhones

Against all odds, Apple is actually meeting the public demand for its iPhones. The Boston Globe wrote an interesting article about the many disappointed grey marketeers who have failed to resell their brand new phones for the exorbitant prices they usually ask for when selling scarce but in-demand items.

Indeed, it would seem that Apple was entirely prepared for the overwhelming success of its new phone and acted accordingly, making enough of the product to go around. The Globe reports:

Across the nation, people looking to make a quick profit bought one, two, or as many phones as they could by recruiting friends to stand in line with them. Many were the first to get in line, camping overnight outside the stores. But now they are finding that the iPhone is much more like a Harry Potter book than a hard-to-find Nintendo Wii video game machine: a great thing to be one of the first to own, but not high in resale value because supply is not constrained.

Last Friday, just after the first iPhones were sold, thousands of listings showed up on eBay and Craigslist, with prices of $1,000 for the 8-gigabyte phone, a $400 markup. Some bold sellers were asking $2,000. But as it became clear that supply was meeting demand, they found themselves stuck. Few phones have sold for more than $700, which after taxes, is not a remarkable profit .

In other, better, news, one special iPhone will be going for at least a 100k. The Keep a Child Alive auction, which will serve to get kids with AIDS anti-retroviral treatment, has just received its highest offer yet (100k), and the market is still wide open for any potential bidders out there. It will be interesting to see just how high it can go.

Reselling an iPhone? Bad News

Keep a Child Alive

[via Consumerist: No Greymarket for the iPhone]