網誌分類：Economics |
Apple is always good at marketing. Other than the good innovation of iPhone itself, iPhone has changed the landscape of telecom industry. This is a good lesson for those tech-kie in telecom industry to learn.
iPhone 2G has never been sold officially in Hong Kong . All iPhones 2G in HK are parallel imports. We all know it. The traditional product life cycle of telecom products is short (half a year?) and the price will drop when the PLC is at maturity stage. We learn it from marketing class.
iPhone changes this theory. All iPhone were from AppStore and they were locked. Also Apple only co-operate with one teleco in each country. The introductory price of 8Gb 2G unlocked iPhone in HK at early launch (version 1.11) was about HK$4,000 (parallel imports). I expected the price will follow the traditional intelligence and will drop. However, it was wrong! The price was increased nearly to HK$6,000! Why? It was because Apple changed the software lock in version 1.12 and the software lock took very long to crack down. The supply in iPhone version 1.11 was very limited (discontinued after version 1.12 released). And the demand in Hong Kong (also include the mainland visitors) was much larger. Therefore the price went up. It made those local phone shops earn a lot of money because of the unbalanced demand and supply. Also the 2nd hand phone shops can profit from it. It was due to the demand was so big. A second hand iPhone 8G was as expensive as HK$4,000. Since those phone shops people were the software lock cracker, they didn't have incentive to crack the software lock.
About 9 months after the introduction if iPhone 2G, the iPhone 3G was launched in 11 July 2008. Again Apple only works with one teleco in each country. In HK, they have chose Hutchison Telecom. I know iPhone has the software lock in US, but Hutchison is smart enough to choose all phones are without software lock. I will talk about it in next story.
I always follow the technology trends very close. So I have also bought an iPhone 3G and decided to trade in my old iPhone 2G.. I checked the normal phone store price on 24 July. A 8Gb phone price was HK$9,800 and a 16Gb phone price was HK$12,800. It was crazy! I decided to queue up and bought from Hutchison on 25 July! Since I am a loyal customer of Hutchison 3G (since the first launch in 3G in 2003). They put me in the platinum membership. I can buy the phone (white color 16Gb) for HK$1,938 only! The shop assistant told me the iPhone highest historical price was HK$18,000 at Yahoo Auction! It was a no-brainer to sell the phone immediate and made my profit. I didn’t really care about the 2 years contract because I need to use mobile phone in every day. The next day I sold it to a phone store at HK$8,550. I made a profit of HK$6,612. So simple and effortless!
This time the Hutchison iPhone is not locked and why there is still a profit making opportunity? It is simply because the iPhone 2G nor 3G has officially launched in China (at least 6 months later or longer time), our big big market behind. Every day the phone traders collect the iPhone 3G and sell to China . This makes the profit opportunity! Again, the profit making opportunity is because unbalanced demand and support. Hutchison sells a lot of call plans, phone shops make money by collecting phones from customers. Normal people makes profit by selling iPhone to these shops. China Hong Kong phone traders make profits by selling iPhone to China . This is the value chain.
But I don’t recommend you to stock up a lot of iPhone. Because the China market may be saturated gradually. You may lose money. Unless Hutchison or Apple changes the game rule, by start locking the iPhone. This happens before in Apple. And I don’t think Hutchison will take this initiative because it will affect it to sell its call plan. I also heard that the unlocked iPhone 3G USA version will be imported parallelly to HK soon. Hutchison should insists to sell the unlocked iPhone. At the end of the day, Hutchison is better off by selling call plans. But Apple may think differently. They may force Hutchison to lock the phone or produce a new version 2.1, which is locked. Apple's marketing is smart enough to protect their interest - they control all the supply ultimately.
If you have a iPhone 3G, I suggest you to keep it. And wait for Apple to issue a new version which is locked. Your iPhone may be appreciated!
