Scalpers in China suffer losses on foldable iPhone Duo

A vendor from an electronics shopping mall in Hangzhou said that almost everyone reselling foldable smartphones is currently in the red. According to him, losses for more experienced market participants reach 100,000–200,000 yuan and more. Even before sales started, scalpers had purchased Apple's first foldable smartphone at a markup: they anticipated shortages similar to those during previous iPhone launches, but demand fell short of expectations.

Among the reasons cited in the same reports are customer complaints about a fragile screen and poor application adaptation to the internal display. Citing Gizmochina, 3DNews writes that, according to sellers, interest in the model waned due to hinge issues and unrefined software. Apple previously acknowledged the issue with the iPhone Duo screens.

The drop in prices was noticed immediately after sales began. According to the South China Morning Post, three days after the launch in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei, the 1 TB version was offered for 24,300 yuan, whereas it had previously cost over 25,000 yuan. Jiemian reported that on the Dewu platform, the average price of the 256 GB version dropped from over 20,000 yuan during the pre-order period to around 17,000 yuan on the launch day.