Smugglers Return iPhones to China

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Let me see if I understand this correctly…iPhones are made in China. They are shipped to the United States and sold to people here. The phones are then smuggled back into China. Huh!?!?!

These unofficial distribution networks help explain a mystery that analysts who follow Apple have been pondering: why is there a large gap between the number of iPhones that Apple says it sold last year, about 3.7 million, and the 2.3 million that are actually registered on the networks of its wireless partners in the United States and Europe? The answer now seems clear.
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Just when you think you've heard it all, something else is around the corner. I have to admit that they are not that bright.
 
And people talk crap about the P168 being a shitty chinese copy. Hah.
 
Things like this is why we need to boycott ALL THINGS China and bring our jobs back to the USA. No wonder this country is eyeball deep in debt.. At this rate, no one needs to attack us to destroy us, all they need to do is let us dig the debt hole deeper until they own the entire American dollar.

Screw friendly foreign policy
 
I don't think we need to go that far, just raise tarriffs and fuck nafta.
 
dark4181 said:
Things like this is why we need to boycott ALL THINGS China and bring our jobs back to the USA. No wonder this country is eyeball deep in debt.. At this rate, no one needs to attack us to destroy us, all they need to do is let us dig the debt hole deeper until they own the entire American dollar.

Screw friendly foreign policy
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Ya... So what does that have to do with this thread?

Lets look at your statements.

1) People buying iPhones and bringing them to China shows that the Chinese should be boycotted.
2) People buying iPhones and bringing them to China shows that jobs should be moved back to the USA.
3) People buying iPhones and bringing them to China is causing the government to have debt, despite the fact that taxes are paid on the iPhones and the company selling the iPhones is getting their profit.

Do you even attempt to link the thread to what you say? or do you just love spewing protectionist bullshit? Sorry that you can't make $25/hour doing menial labour, but you're not entitled to jack. They want to do the same work for less, then they should go for it. Guess what they system is called? CAPITALISM. Take your Socialist/commie BS elsewhere.
 
Ummm...

The only problem with this situation is Apple's bad business model.

Think about if they were charging enough for the iPhones to begin with.

If someone buys a iPod to send back home we are profiting off it.

We buy iPhones from china for $200 a pop. Then smugglers pay $400 to ship it back to china?

Explain to me how that is bad for US companies/the economy in general.

The only reason it is bad is because the fact you assume the iPhone will be used on a network and you get residuals from the monthly fees.

That assumption is the leak, not the smuggling.
 
Makes sense. Apple can control the phone until it hits the US. After that, it's no holds barred. Hey when I went to Hawaii they smuggled their narcotics from California. Yeah home of the Maui Wowie.
 
Term-X said:
Just when you think you've heard it all, something else is around the corner. I have to admit that they are not that bright.
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If you mean "they" as in the Chinese, I have to disagree. There is a lot of money exchanging hands over there and a rapidly expanding middle class who wants to buy fancy products. With money to burn, why not get something cool? Apple probably keeps a tight lid on their shipping business too, so it's not like they wouldn't notice a million phones just disappearing.

"They" as in Apple? That company has a flawed, stubborn business model for the iPhone. Popular electronic products are bound to get cloned in China and by insisting on having locked phones, Apple is just keeping themselves out of big, legitimate markets.
 
Nemesis999 said:
Ya... So what does that have to do with this thread?

Lets look at your statements.

1) People buying iPhones and bringing them to China shows that the Chinese should be boycotted.
2) People buying iPhones and bringing them to China shows that jobs should be moved back to the USA.
3) People buying iPhones and bringing them to China is causing the government to have debt, despite the fact that taxes are paid on the iPhones and the company selling the iPhones is getting their profit.

Do you even attempt to link the thread to what you say? or do you just love spewing protectionist bullshit? Sorry that you can't make $25/hour doing menial labour, but you're not entitled to jack. They want to do the same work for less, then they should go for it. Guess what they system is called? CAPITALISM. Take your Socialist/commie BS elsewhere.
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You're right that I didn't properly link my argument to the topic at hand. But it's certainly not "socialist/commie BS" for an American to want to protect the integrity of the American market/dollar.. All of the bad products coming from China back my statement. 1) Lead contaminated toys, 2) hardware piracy, 3) software piracy, 4) the weakening of the American dollar because of borrowing from Chinese (or other foreign) banks, 5) outsourcing strictly for the sake of profit. Much like Socialism is flawed, Capitalism is also flawed. If by supporting outsourcing America is reduced to a nation of consumers, and nothing else, dependent upon other nations' goods, then I contend that your argument puts YOU on the Socialist side, and me on the sane side.

But again, to properly link my argument to the thread, if the iphones were made here, they would cost more, and the Chinese would have to pay the smugglers more to get them smuggled over to then. Thus, our economy would actually be strengthened by this. As it stands, the Chinese are only strengthening their own economy now, and weakening ours by protracting our need to keep outsourcing jobs to them.
 
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