Blue Whale News, September 14th: "Last year, the second-hand market for the 15 series sold at an hourly rate, while this year's 16 series is estimated to sell at a minute rate," the scalper told reporters.
Official website crashes, e-commerce platforms run out of stock
Luo Yonghao satirizes Apple's zero innovation
But the iPhone 16 series still sells well
On the evening of September 13th at 8 o'clock, Apple's newly released iPhone 16 series phones officially started pre ordering, and that night, a rush of buying frenzy swept across the internet.
Firstly, through official channels, due to the high number of visitors, the Apple official website and Apple Store experienced a brief outage, causing both the web and app versions to be stuck on the welcome page. The phrase 'Apple official website crashed' also briefly went viral on Weibo.
Among the four products, iPhone 16 Pro Max became the hottest model. The first batch of machines that arrived on September 20th were sold out within 10 minutes of release, and subsequent paying users had to wait until October to receive them.
In addition, the battle situation of e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, JD, Pinduoduo and Tiktok is also hot.
On the night of the pre-sale, multiple versions of iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max were out of stock at the official Tmall Apple flagship store, especially the Desert Gold version. The first batch of products sold out immediately. That night, Tmall added replenishment overnight, up to 15 times within an hour.
According to official data released by JD.com, the pre-sale of iPhone 16 series on JD.com has exceeded 100 million yuan in sales volume within 2 minutes. JD.com announced that it will ship the product as soon as possible on September 20th, with a delivery time of "as fast as 9 minutes".
In addition to e-commerce platforms, Ele.me and Meituan have even joined this battle. In order to attract consumers to purchase the iPhone 16 series, major platforms are competing on price, subsidy, speed, and after-sales, which shows the lively atmosphere of the pre-sale night for the iPhone 16 series.
It is worth noting that after Apple's autumn launch event, this generation of new products received poor reviews.
Luo Yonghao called Apple "zero innovation"; Zhou Hongyi bluntly stated that he does not plan to buy an iPhone 16 because he has already chosen the Huawei Extraordinary Master Mate XT; Jia Yueting posted that Apple is becoming mediocre, and the press conference was just a lonely experience; Musk mocked Apple for adding only two new buttons and one new color to its $50 billion R&D budget.
Although Cook claimed that "the iPhone 16 series is the most advanced iPhone we have ever built," he still couldn't shake off the doubts of "squeezing toothpaste, lack of innovation, and lack of sincerity.
Yellow cattle speculation, difficult to sell at a premium
Is there a false prosperity behind the rush to buy?
Since this generation of iPhone has a poor reputation, why is it still popular during pre-sales?
A mobile phone digital merchant told Blue Whale News reporters, "Among the group of people who rushed to buy last night, in addition to regular fruit fans, there were also a large number of scalpers. Behind the so-called rush to buy, a large part of it was driven by scalpers. They crazily scanned various platforms such as Apple's official website, Tmall, and JD.com on the day of pre-sale, and then sold them to others at a price higher than the market on September 20th to earn the price difference. In fact, this scalpers' reselling model plays out every year, and the so-called pre-sale boom is only relatively low compared to other brands. In fact, the popularity of new phones this year is much lower than in previous years
In the past two years, Apple's updates and iterations have not been obvious, and scalpers want to take advantage of this wave of pre-sales to make a profit. Many individual buyers also want to operate in this way, which creates the illusion of a nationwide rush to buy. In fact, there are not many users who need to replace their phones, "the merchant explained.
More than one scalper told reporters that in previous years, grabbing a phone for 1000 yuan was a steady profit, but this year it is not easy to make money by stealing phones. Nowadays, there are more people reselling machines than those who intend to buy them. Most people come here asking how much they can charge, and few people want to buy. In a situation where supply exceeds demand, we have no profit margin at all.
Last year's scalper harvesting boom
A scalper said, "This year, there is still a slight premium for the Pro, and no one is interested in the basic series. It is expected that the first batch of 16 Pro Max will have a premium of 400 to 500, with slight price differences between different colors. However, the 16 basic series is likely to be released immediately after its first release
As the scalper said, the case of Apple's premium foam bursting last year is still vivid. When it first went on sale in the morning, popular models such as iPhone 15 Pro Max were priced at an additional 500-1000 yuan. However, by the afternoon of the same day, they were basically available for purchase at their original price, with only a few models requiring a slight markup. On the second day, some models of the iPhone 15 series had already broken through in terms of channel prices, and the price range was quite large, which made many scalpers who were hoarding goods suffer unbearable.
Last year's scalper harvesting boom
Although there are still 6 days left until the official launch, the second-hand market trading is already booming. Some scalpers joked, "Last year, the 15 series was priced at an hour, but this year's 16 series is estimated to be priced at a minute
