On Wednesday morning I stopped by the SoHo Apple store in New York City to purchase an iPad for a family member. As I had anticipated, a store clerk said they were out of stock and recommended that I check back the following morning. When I asked what time I should arrive, the clerk hesitated, looked around as if about to tell me a secret and said: "Well, do you see that group of people outside? They're already here waiting for tomorrow's shipment of iPads."
I looked, and saw that outside the store sat a small group of Chinese men and women ready with camping chairs and apparently all the time in the world, preparing for a chilly night on New York's streets as they waited to buy the iPad 2.
As I've reported in the past, there is an active trade for Apple's latest gadgets in China, and it's evident in New York in long lines of Chinese outside Apple's stores waiting to buy the products -- originally made in China -- to send them back to that country for resale. This has been going on with the iPhone for a while. But it is a bit more complicated with the iPad because the device is in short supply, and in very high demand. This means that the resale price is much higher than it was for previous Apple gadgets. And so there is motivation for sleeping out overnight to wait for the next day's shipment.
The people I saw waiting outside the SoHo store mostly refused to answer questions about what they were doing. But one man, who looked to be around 40 years old and declined to share his name, said he could make up to $400 a day by purchasing and reselling the iPad 2. As I reported last year, this is more money than many Chinese immigrants make in a week.
The SoHo store isn't an anomaly either. Twitter users regularly share sightings of long lines of Chinese people waiting overnight at Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York.