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Friday’s iPhone 4S launch in China

Friday’s iPhone 4S launch in China

According to eyewitness reports, fights broke out at Sanlitun among rival gangs of 30 to 50 “yellow bull” scalpers — migrant workers bused in by resellers and promised 120 yuan ($19) and a food allowance to stand in line.Although China Unicom (CHU) will begin selling the device for heavily subsidized prices at midnight — eight hours earlier — most Chinese buyers seem to be congregating at Apple’s own stores, perhaps to get the unlocked versions that only Apple sells.

The Chinese blog M.I.C. Gadget reports that when an unidentified man with a bullhorn announced that the sale had been cancelled, the crowd chanted “Open the door!” and “Liars!” and began pelting the store with eggs.It could be long, cold night. Millions of Chinese farmers have had their lands ruthlessly exploited by government backed developers and these people are rioting because they can’t have their newest toys on time? There is something really wrong here.

According to Millward, temperatures are supposed to drop to 3°C (37°F) overnight in Shanghai and even lower in Beijing.Rockcraft, Yesterday 01:53 PM.Perhaps if folks stopped being so obsessed with being “connected” and got back to sitting down with each other and having real conversations, we might be able to have meaningful and enlightened exchanges again.Apple’s four other stores in Beijing and Shanghai did manage to open, but closed almost immediately.

To cut down on line-jumping — and to keep the scalpers in check — staffers at several stores have been handing out tickets to customers who’ve queued up early.”This is a debacle,” Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group told Bloomberg News. “There isn’t enough product in enough retail points.”As a private company, Apple is responsible for event security. It’s not the local police’s job to know in advance of Apple’s intentions.

If they didn’t plan ahead for the fans and scalpers, then they needed to shut it down as quickly as possible. “The demand for iPhone 4S has been incredible, and our stores in China have already sold out,” an Apple spokesperson told AllThingsD. For now, the phones are available only online and through Apple’s partner China Unicom (CHU). After waiting as much as 12 hours in temperatures that fell to -9°C, they were understandably angry when all they got for their trouble was their 10-yuan food allowance.

Tags: allowance, Apple, Electronics, gadget, iPhone