Oct 2, 2014
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The Truth Behind the Line
One of the busiest days in the tech industry is the day that any new iPhone hits the market. The hype for the first iPhone released in 2007 was insane, analysts expected the excitement to die as future iterations of the phone were released. That prediction has yet to come fruition. Love for the iPhone has only gotten stronger and stronger, or so it appears.
Apple began taking pre orders of the iPhone 6 on September 12th. Within the first 24 hours of taking pre-orders, Apple had recorded over 4 million orders. To put that in perspective only 2 million orders of the iPhone 5 were made in 2012. The iPhone became available on September 19th and after the first weekend of sales Apple reported that over 10 million iPhones had been sold. “Sales for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus exceeded our expectations for the launch weekend, and we couldn’t be happier,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. iPhones are still flying off the shelf but waiting in lines outside Apple Stores for the new iPhone has evolved into something totally different from the days of the first iPhone.
Different media outlets have done a lot of reporting lately about the people who are slept for days waiting or the new iPhone. Two of those reports paint a totally different picture of what waiting for the iPhone looked like this year compared to the pictures of eccentric Apple die hard of years past.
Chinese Mafia
A video has been circulating the internet since the launch of the new iPhone showing that the Chinese Mafia has taken over the iPhone 6 lines. The video shows how the mafia operation works as people wait in line to buy their two iPhones. After leaving the store, they find a contact and bid away the iPhones they have just purchased. The excitement that existed in years past is dead as people anxiously wait to profit a few bucks by selling their iPhones to mafia contacts.
Marketing Scheme
Techradar.com was one of the many media outlets to cover the lines outside of the Apple Store on 5th avenue in New York City. They reported that the beginning of the line was filled people promoting their start-ups businesses. The first person in line actually bought their spot at the beginning of the line for $2,500 dollars so they would appear in newspapers, news broadcasts and on the internet. They observed that almost everyone near the front of the line was representing some company with people even flying in from Hong Kong to be part of the line which has become a marketing scheme.
There is no doubt that the iPhone is still hugely popular, sales numbers support that statement. But the game has changed in something different from what it was 7 years ago when the first iPhone was released. How these changes will affect Apple and the brand identity the company has worked so hard to establish have yet to be seen and really only time will tell. As for now, the hype for the iPhone has hit record highs and has been a huge success around the world.