Apple Inc. has halted the release of it’s widely popular iPhone 4s. After running out of stock and near-riots in Beijing, police were stationed out side of the Beijing store after the angry mob of people who has spent the night outside the store pelted the store with eggs and assaulted the mall manager, when the stores employees refused to open as scheduled.
Apple spokesperson Carolyn Wu said, “The company’s 5 authorized stores in China had sold out of the iPhone 4s and the Beijing store was prevented form opening because of the large crowd. To ensure the safety of our customers and employees, the iPhone will not be available in our retails tores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being.”
The phone will still be available however via it’s service provider, China Unicom. The device is being offered free to customers that sign for a multi year contract. The crowds that were lined up at the stores were not interested in the contract and willing to pay $790 to $1070 for each unit.
Update 1.25.2012– During Apple’s earnings call yesterday, CEO Tim Cook said that he’s been happy with sales of the iPhone 4S in Greater China. But since the phone didn’t launch until January, the results weren’t counted for the December quarter, a move the Apple chief seemed to regret.
“We felt we were betting bold, as I think many of you would have thought if you would have known what we were doing,” Cook said (about 19 minutes into the audio of the conference call). “But as it turns out, we didn’t bet high enough.” Source: CNET
Source: LATimes