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iPhone 6 Goes On Sale in China to Minimal Excitement

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The Apple Store in Beijing's Sanlitun shopping district. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Apple Store in Beijing’s Sanlitun shopping district. (Wikimedia Commons)

New Yorkers might have lined up for days leading up to the iPhone 6’s launch, but the gadget’s debut in China — which happened Friday morning — doesn’t sound like it was met with the same level of enthusiasm.

A mere 100 customers lined up outside the Apple Store in an upscale Beijing shopping district to pick up their pre-ordered new iPhones, the Wall Street Journal reports. The paper also described the event as “decidedly low-key.” Womp womp.

Check out these sad details from the WSJ‘s coverage of the launch:

While some past sales had attracted thousands of buyers who queued overnight, only a handful of customers had showed up an hour before the store opened, outnumbered by the two-dozen private-security guards hired for the occasion.

Oh man, the thought of all those unnecessary guards gives us serious second-hand embarrassment.

Different from the mosh pit-esque jostling you’d expect from a typical tech launch, the scene outside this Beijing Apple store sounded unsettlingly peaceful and orderly:

The line grew steadily as the clock ticked toward opening hour, composed entirely of pre-order customers who arrived to pick up their new phones during their assigned time slots. Others who didn’t place pre-orders stood idly by, awaiting their turn to join the line.

The WSJ partially attributes the anticlimactic launch to the fact that the iPhone 6 went on sale elsewhere in China at midnight, meaning many got their hands on the new device before stores opened at 8 a.m.

New Yorkers seemed to display considerably more excitement — some of it borderline insane — about the iPhone 6’s launch.

On Craigslist, for instance, a black market emerged for iPhone 6 line sitters, some of whom charged up to $2,500 for their services. Other Craigslist users tried to capitalize on the iPhone 6 mania by creepily offering up their devices in exchange for sex. Gross.

One foreseeable plus-side to Beijing’s anticlimactic iPhone 6 launch? Less hype probably meant less anxious customers, and therefore a smaller chance of someone immediately dropping their brand new phone on the sidewalk.


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