“Demand for the iPhone X has been ‘off the charts,’ according to Apple, which led to the new device selling out in a matter of minutes,” Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch. “Because of the scarcity of the hotly anticipated device, sellers have been scalping their pre-order confirmations on eBay, hoping to cash in on consumer demand.”
“According to the latest figures from eBay, there were more than 1,200 listings posted on its site within 45 minutes of the pre-sales opening at 12 midnight PT today,” Perez reports. “We ran an ‘iPhone X’ search now, and found more than 4,480 live listings, the majority being ‘Buy It Now’ offers instead of auctions.”
“While it’s too soon to say what the average selling price is — that will require more sales data over a longer period of time to be accurate — eBay says most of the listings appear to be in the $1,500 price range… (The $1,500 price range appears to apply to the 64GB iPhone X, from what we’re seeing.),” Perez reports. “eBay will continue to track iPhone X sales over the weekend, and we’ll update if and when the company has more data to share.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Supply always comes on the heels of demand. — Robert Collier
SEE ALSO:
Apple iPhone X offers top $60,000 on eBay – October 27, 2017
this sort of thing is so stupid.
What’s this dumb-assed comment supposed to mean?
Obviously, you are to stupid to understand.
to, two and too. learn the difference.
Is this situation very unusual? Hasn’t it also happened for other low-supply iPhones in the past? I’ve read where other commenters said they do this as a common thing because there are always people who have to be the first on the block to own some product. If people didn’t think they’d make money by posting a product on eBay, then it wouldn’t be done. I’d never been a hurry to own some product, so it wouldn’t occur to me to pay more for a product that will eventually be available at a lower price.
I never liked the idea of scalping but that’s something that will never be stopped. It takes two to keep the game going. I wonder if this happened a lot with the Samsung Galaxy 8 and Galaxy Note or was there plenty of supply for both that it wasn’t necessary.
LOL. Galaxies are on 2 for 1 sales right out of the gate.
A fool and their money shall soon part…
Sick. I’ve got a life. I can wait.
More people than ever are trying to make some money off of the new iPhones, but supply will even out with demand within a few months, especially as people with preorders arriving later in November and December glut the market. If people are making $1500 on average from their 64GB X, accounting for sales taxes and PayPal/eBay fees, they aren’t making more than $300 a pop. Nice, but barely worth the hassle in time and possible being ripped off, not to mention not having a new iPhone if its your only one.
I apparently ordered 2… had to cancel one today. It wasn’t even linked to my account. Was wondering if that happened..in the chaos of ordering, first failed halfway through (so I thought). Was tempted to let both go though, but delivery isn’t until the 17th, so didn’t want to deal with offloading that “late”..
I remember the good old days when Apple had enough supply to meet demand and little more. It was called ‘Just In Time‘ supply management. Steve Jobs brought it to Apple after the company famously warehoused $1 Billion in unwanted Performa Macs that nobody wanted. The company had to write off that disaster in 1997, creating the ‘Apple’s Gonna Die!’ meme.
Here in the new Apple, we have ‘Way Too Late‘ supply management. I have no frickin’ clue as to who this benefits. Maybe some marketing maven can explain to me why Apple would want to not have enough product to sell at any period of time. I must be too dim to comprehend.
But hey! Maybe there’s hope. A year after their announcement, you can actually, for realz, get Apple AirPods at their retail stores. Golly. Except darn, they announced an improved case for the AirPods that prevent me from wanting to buy the current AirPods. I’ll have to wait until some time in 2018 to get the new AirPods with the new case.
🙃🤦🤢🤡😾
Wake up Apple. Wake up!
Just In Time is about not having parts and then in turn finished products sitting around waiting for orders. That’s completely different from ramping up production on an entirely new thing the demand for which is not truly know. In addition, the sales on the first day are going to be much higher than once those initial orders. The relevant thing is how long the wait ends up being once the pent up demand has been satisfied.
There’s a valid point re the Airpods, once it was established that demand was indeed going to be high on a continuing basis they could have done more to ensure that demand was met, but at the same time I’m sure they did all sorts of cost analysis as to what it would cost to meet that demand versus the revenue long term. No point bringing online new factories costing billions of dollars if that’s just going to eat into the profit made by selling the extra devices.
That’s completely different from ramping up production on an entirely new thing the demand for which is not truly know]n].
Demand at any moment is never entirely known. The concept is to actually bother to study the trends and current orders, etc. with the goal of predicting the demand. But I do agree that knowing the demand at the release of any new product is the most difficult of such predictions.
Nonetheless, Apple has had an excellent ability to predict demand over the years, AFTER the 1996 Performa fiasco. That’s part of the skill set of Tim Cook, or so I’m told.
What we have now, Way Too Late supply management, remains inexplicable. If this were a unique event, we could point to the difficulty in mass producing a new technology. We’re saying that now about the ‘TrueDepth’ imaging system. But Way Too Late has become a bad habit at Apple IMHO. That is my point.
What is actually causing it? Obviously, products are being brought to market that are not able to be produced in enough quantity to meet the BLATANTLY CLEAR demand. WHY? What excuses Way Too Late supply?
I don’t see an actual answer to this quandary in your reply. IMHO it’s bad marketing going on at Apple. It’s great that it’s not Way Too Much supply management! That’s one good point. But Way Too Late, despite the safety from oversupply, is silliness. It’s not good business from my point of view.
IOW: Wait to announce AND release when the product is ready for market.
NOTE how we’re still waiting for the announced iMac Pro. That’s further silliness and entirely out of line from Apple’s history of Just In Time supply.
Absolutely insane behaviour. A massive premium just to get it a few weeks earlier (which is still only the same time as all the people who did get their orders in). It’s not as if they’re special versions that may have some increased value.
Apple thanks you.