Hong Kong iPhone
Monday, September 29th, 2008iPhones went on sale in Hong Kong the other day, which reminded me of my own iPhone experiences there a few months back.
Walk through pretty much any market & you’ll find loads of knockoffs. Knockoff watches, knockoff video games, and knockoff everything. Passing a stand with a bunch of phones, I was particularly surprised to find a knockoff iPhone! While obviously fake, I was sorta curious how well it worked.
Playing naive, I walked over and asked if that was the iphone. The scent of blood in water exited the salesman, exclaiming “yes!” and, as expected, pulling it out for me to see.
Me: “Oh, it’s in Chinese. I thought the real iPhone was in English?”
Him: “Sir! This is real iPhone! I change language for you.”
A few taps and it’s in English. Poking around, I confirmed what the bottom-right icon suggested. It was a fake written in Java, though not a bad one.
Me: “So this is a real iPhone?”
Him (annoyed): “Sir! I tell you already! This is very real iPhone.”
Me: “It is? But it doesn’t have an Apple logo back on the back”, I say as I turn it over.
Him (more annoyed): “Sir! Real iPhone not have Apple logo on the back!”
Me: “I thought they did?”
Him (annoyed/exasperated): “Sir! Ones with logos are fake! This one is real iPhone!”
Me: “Really?”, I ask, pulling my own iPhone out of my other pocket, “Because mine has the logo.”
Him (eyes wide, excited, and without losing a beat): “I pay YOU six hundred American!”
At this point 3G phones were $300 in the states, so I was stumped as to why anyone would pay me double that for the older phone. It turns out, those were easier to unlock, and, as our coworker-guide explained, they’d be able to turn around and sell it for at least $900, easy.
I couldn’t believe it, but later I saw this sign.
(For reference, one US dollar equals about 7.7 hong kong dollars, so about US$1,182 for the 16gig 3G.)
