Dealers raise prices of iPhone

iPhone 4S handsets were sold at higher than official prices at various sales points in the Chinese mainland Sunday as scalpers pushed up the price after the latest Apple product was released in the market Friday.

As most unlocked handsets were bought by scalpers, different authorized Apple resellers offered different prices for the latest iPhone model, with a markup of 500 yuan ($79.28) to even 1,500 yuan each.

The official price for 16G version is 4,999 yuan.

A saleswoman at Apple authorized reseller i-Zone's store in Solana, a shopping mall in Beijing, told the Global Times that consumers have to pay 800 yuan more for black models available in her store, and they can get an extra battery and USB flash drive for free.

In another authorized reseller Dragonstar's China World Trade Center store, both black and white colors of phones are available, but consumers are asked to buy 1,500 yuan worth of mobile phone accessories while purchasing an iPhone 4S.

Other sellers also increased the prices, mostly with a markup of 500 yuan. The 16G versions were sold at 5,499 yuan Sunday on suning.com, the online store of electrical appliances retailer Suning Corporation, increased from 5,199 yuan.

When asked why suning.com charged higher for the product, the company said on its website that "online prices float based on market prices."

Gome.com, another electrical appliances retailer, also priced the 16G phone at 5,449 yuan.

In comparison, the market has a sufficient supply of China Unicom contract packages, with 16G phones sold at 5,880 yuan.

"As people have more choices, China Unicom faces intense competition to attract high-end consumers from other operators," Ji Chendong, a senior IT consultant at KPMG China, told the Global Times Sunday.

"China Unicom is currently the exclusive partner of iPhone 4, but China Telecom is expected to launch its version of iPhone 4S as early as this February, with the advantage of CDMA network. China Mobile is also interested in cooperating with Apple, which has the strength of a big consumer base," Ji said.

In a survey conducted by Sina Weibo, 17 percent of the respondents showed preference for China Unicom version, while 38 percent said that they would like to buy a Chinese Telecom model.

However, Ji believes the sales of iPhone 4S will not be as good as that of iPhone 4 as there are no significant changes, except for a better camera and Siri voice recognition software.

"We also predict that iPhone 5 would be introduced to the market late this year, which would further diminish the attractiveness of iPhone 4S," Ji noted.