Chinese Crowds Wait All Night for the Apple iPad 2

Big crowds and lots of scalpers were the name of the day in China as Apple launched the iPad 2 in the Asian country.

An early morning start didn’t do much to dampen the enthusiasm of the queue of patient technology fans. Eye witness reports suggest that there were more purchasers going for a first day shop than on the launch day of the first generation of the iPad last year, although the better weather this year might have had a lot to do with it.

Those really keen Apple fans who had decided to forsake their bed for a hard Beijing pavement were given numbered wristbands to avoid any sort of jiggery pokery, and they even had the sensible rule of returning wristbands of anyone who went away and came back before an hour had passed. It was reported that for the 8am start some customers had turned up at 5pm the day before.

Anyone who wanted to skip the queue and rush straight home with their hot new tablet had the option of paying around £30 extra to the scalpers, which sounds very reasonable.

Official sales figures aren’t yet available but China is a market where Apple traditionally sells more white gadgets, and the initial on the spot reaction was that this was also the case with the iPad 2.

Online iPad 2 sales also went so well that stocks were sold out within hours. The lag time between Apple products going on sale in the US and China is dropping all the time, with the Asian country’s huge grey market having a big influence on this.

Would you queue up overnight for a new gadget? Or have you already?
Source: Mic gadget