On Friday, October 23, the first foldable iPhone Duo was launched for sale worldwide in Apple stores. In mainland China, on the first day of sales at Apple stores, customers who had pre-ordered online were provided with in-store pickup services. Customers who had not secured orders in advance were unable to purchase the device directly in stores on that day.
At 8 am on Friday morning, Apple stores opened their doors ahead of schedule. According to posts on social media platforms, customers in cities like Guangzhou, Beijing, and Jinan were already lining up outside Apple stores early in the morning to collect the first batch of new devices.
According to reports from The Paper, the Apple store in Jing’an, Shanghai, saw a crowd of people gathering early in the morning to get their hands on the iPhone Duo. The first customer to receive the new device, Mr. Jiang, purchased a white 256GB version of the iPhone Duo. He mentioned that he had managed to secure this particular iPhone Duo during the pre-sale and was excited to experience the foldable feature. Coming from using an iPhone Air, he found similarities between the two devices in terms of being lightweight, but appreciated the larger screen when the iPhone Duo is unfolded.
Meanwhile, scalpers began to gather around the Apple store in Jing’an as well. Some scalpers reportedly resold a 1TB iPhone Duo with a markup of 4,000 yuan, while the 512GB version had markups of around 2,000 yuan.
Outside the Apple store in Sanlitun, Beijing, a considerable number of people were already queuing up, waiting to pick up their pre-ordered devices.
As of 8 am Beijing time on October 23, the second-hand trading platform DaWu App showed that after a week of pre-sales, the markups for different storage capacities of the iPhone Duo had decreased significantly, with some versions seeing markups shrinking by nearly 50%.
For example, in the case of the 256GB version, the average online selling price decreased from 20,560 yuan on October 16 to 18,237 yuan, with markups shrinking from 4,561 yuan to 2,238 yuan, marking a reduction of approximately 50.9% within a week. The 512GB version saw a similar trend, with the average selling price dropping from 22,666 yuan to 20,388 yuan, and markups shrinking from 4,667 yuan to 2,389 yuan, a reduction of around 48.8%.
According to reports from The Paper, scalpers revealed that those willing to purchase at high markups were customers who had already paid a deposit to secure their purchases. On the other hand, those who were reluctant to pay high markups were still looking for customers, fearing that price fluctuations in the short term could lead to losses. Observing the situation on site, many scalpers were hesitant to offer high markups, with markups generally staying around 2,000 yuan.
Upwu News also reported that some scalpers were offering to repurchase the devices with markups starting at 2,000 yuan, stating, “They dare not raise prices too much for fear of being stuck with unsold merchandise due to a market bubble.”
As Apple’s first foldable device, the iPhone Duo faced high demand during the pre-sale phase, leading to shortages and intense competition to secure one. Many people tried to purchase the device but failed to secure orders at the front of the queue. Within minutes of the pre-sale launch, pre-orders for the iPhone Duo were already backed up until January next year.