There probably wont be much of a shortage - Apple is the biggest company in the world, and if there is profit to be made on their products, dammit they are going to be the ones that make that profit! Will never beat the xbox 360 launch day when i bought 6 of them (worked at virgin megastore) then took them over the road and sold them at CEX for twice what i paid. 2 grand profit in about an hour, winner!
The reason is probably that people want to buy them unlocked and contract free which you cannot do at phones 4u and o2.
Well I can see a 16Gb are going on ebay for £660 at the moment with 32bids and 16 minutes to go. Post to Americas, Asia, European Union, Australia That is a pretty good profit (even after sellers fees).
I'm surprised as there seems to be plenty of them to go round this time. Reckon you could walk into an O2 store tomorrow and pick one up.
And it is now sold at £680 + shipping. That is £151 over RRP. The risk of course is that the buyer scams you...e.g. says item not received or is damaged.
ok there is something fishy going on. The one for £920 had lots of cancelled bids and eventually went for £870. http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=150905675239 Pump and dump baby ! Roll in the suckers...
You'll often find people buying them if the release date in their own country is either later, or not at all. The iPhone wasn't available in China for a long time so people would buy it here and presumably ship it back to China for friends/family. Same with any other country.
