By John Wong, posted Nov 4, 2012 at 9:04 PM, 1,854 views,

Grey Market Vendors are Less Interested on the iPad Mini

iPad mini, the Apple latest smaller tablet, finally start selling in Hong Kong’s Apple Store this pass Friday. During the first day of sale, the staff at the Apple Store IFC mall’s were welcoming the customers who successfully make a reservation for purchasing the iPad mini. In the pass, the mall will crowded with scalpers and grey market traders, waiting outside to handle the “goods”. But this time, only few customers arrived to pick up their devices, thanks to the reserve and pickup system. Yes, casual consumer just can’t walk-in to the store and buy the new gadget, Apple won’t allowed. Even the press were not so interested to cover the news, we only saw about 10 journalists on the spot. It was even more desolated compare to the previous iPhone 5’s launch. Although the blue-shirts troops were giving customers big claps and cheering, but it’s still helpless to the deserted atmosphere …

At the scene, we have a chance to chat with one of the customer. Mrs. Chan, a housewife of an Apple-fan family, told us she was lucky enough to be chosen by Apple to purchase the new tablet on the first day of sale. She refused to resell it as she believe, iPad mini wouldn’t be that popular as iPhone 5 in mainland China. On the other side, SinTat Square, the well-known mobile phone grey market in HK, was also not too keen on the new iPad mini. Mr Lo, the famous grey market vendor, told us the “buyers” in mainland just became conservative. The purchasing price of the 16GB iPad mini is about HK$3,000 (US$384), 32GB model cost HK$3,900 (US$500), 64GB model cost HK$4,200 (US$538). For the 16GB iPad mini, seller may earn only HK$500 (US$64) each for the reselling, which is only half of the public prediction. However, after a few several hours, the traders told us they are not going to take in the iPad mini anymore, as the order from mainland China is full (more than enough ? ). Looks like Chinese consumer is not so interested for the iPad mini. And by the way, no one is concerned on the 4th gen iPad.