Grey Market Archive

  • Longines opens their first online store

    Longines opens their first online store

    Posted on April 21, 2010 | No Comments
    The world of fine watches is a benighted place. Strange hang-ups masquerading as tradition are the norm and historically watch companies have looked at every new improvement to their business with trepidation. Consider the quartz movement, for example. Texas Instruments approached a number of Swiss companies when they first created the miniaturized quartz watch but no one wanted it - it was beneath them. China and Japan, however, bought the movements by the truckload and ate old horology's lunch. For years, watch companies have only allowed their wares to be sold through authorized dealers. This meant you had to go into a frou-frou shop, get talked down to by a snooty salesperson, and then pay over retail for a watch that was worth, in terms of parts and materials, about half of its sticker price. Pretty nice scam, huh? The Internet came along and those authorized dealers hit on a nice scam. They'd "sell" their watches to real people - shills, usually - and those real people would resell them online. Swatch Group, for example, is currently fighting this grey market in the Supreme Court. However, another part of the Swatch Group, Longines, is taking to the Internet like a duck to duck sauce.

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  • One iPad per child: Seton Hill to give all students iPads

    One iPad per child: Seton Hill to give all students iPads

    Posted on March 30, 2010 | No Comments
    Remember textbooks? Yeah. Forget about textbooks. Students at Seton Hill University are all getting iPads and access to all their textbooks on the iBook store. I'd say it's one of the biggest changes in pedagogy since the move from the one-room schoolhouse. TUAW has a tip from a Seton Hill student who sent in a memo that said: "Students will be able to download their textbooks to their iPads from the iBook Store. In addition, iPads can be used as phones and for air and file sharing, as well as note-taking." Gone will be the days of lugging a huge calculus book from room to room and I can only imagine the mixture of joy and dread as textbook publishers realize the grey market for used textbooks is dead but, in its place, a new pirate market will appear overnight.

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  • The iPhone rules Japan’s smartphone market. Android and Blackberry almost non-existent.

    The iPhone rules Japan’s smartphone market. Android and Blackberry almost non-existent.

    Posted on December 17, 2009 | No Comments
    It's big in Korea, it's probably big in China's grey market, and the iPhone continues to be big in Japan. According to a report [JP] released by Tokyo-based research company Impress R&D, the iPhone has captured a whopping 46.1% of the domestic smartphone market.

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  • Japan’s smartphone market: The iPhone is huge, the BlackBerry and Android aren’t

    Japan’s smartphone market: The iPhone is huge, the BlackBerry and Android aren’t

    Posted on December 17, 2009 | No Comments
    It's big in Korea, it's probably big in China's grey market, and the iPhone continues to be big in Japan. According to a report [JP] released by Tokyo-based research company Impress R&D, the iPhone has captured a whopping 46.1% of the domestic smartphone market.

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  • Zii Trinity mobile platform packs 1080p punch, looking for OEM love

    Zii Trinity mobile platform packs 1080p punch, looking for OEM love

    Posted on December 1, 2009 | No Comments
    Ready to start lusting after a new smartphone? If Creative has its way, you'll soon be enjoying Full HD video on a 3.5 / 4G device, with built-in WiFi, 5 megapixel autofocus camera, accelerated 3D graphics, and mini-HDMI and Composite video outputs. The newly announced 3.1-inch, multitouch-capable Zii Trinity has been designed by Creative subsidiary Ziilabs, and will be licensed out to clients who'll be able to customize a Zii-optimized Android install and Plaszma interface. As if we haven't got enough smartphone ecosystems knocking about already, this also marks the introduction of ZiiLife, which aims to be both a content delivery and productivity suite. Powered by the ARM-based ZMS-05 or ZMS-08, the new handset actually seems destined to perform plenty of KIRF and grey market duties, judging by Creative's "strategic partnerships" with Chinese manufacturers, but that might be no bad thing as, according to Gartner, the grey market is booming right now.

    Zii Trinity mobile platform packs 1080p punch, looking for OEM love originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Apple sells only 5,000 official iPhones in China

    Apple sells only 5,000 official iPhones in China

    Posted on November 3, 2009 | No Comments
    Not that this should surprise anyone, but Apple has sold only 5,000 iPhones since last week when it officially launched. The phrase “officially launched” is key, since people there have been able to buy the iPhone on the gray market for some time now. And it's a superior phone on the grey market, since the official phone doesn't have Wi-Fi. That's right: a smartphone nearly in 2010 that doesn't have Wi-Fi.

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  • Chinese iPhone to sell 1 million units first year

    Chinese iPhone to sell 1 million units first year

    Posted on July 28, 2009 | No Comments
    iPhonAsia has some information on China's exciting WiFi-crippled iPhone. The device will cost less than the smuggled, grey-market iPhones currently available in China and will include special apps for the Chinese consumer. Considering Apple and China's track record these last few weeks I wonder how much good will Apple last left in the land of the violent Foxconn security team.

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  • Rumor: GSM Pre being announced next week?

    Rumor: GSM Pre being announced next week?

    Posted on July 1, 2009 | No Comments
    Oh, Palm Pre. You’ve got style. You’ve got grace. You’ve even got a PlayStation emulator! But what you don’t have, young one, is a SIM card slot that makes you friendly with the vast majority of popular carriers around the world. That won’t be a problem much longer, or so say the rumor mill. Now, we’ve [...]

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  • Make money on your iPhone 3G

    Make money on your iPhone 3G

    Posted on June 23, 2009 | No Comments
    Every few year or so I update my MacBook(s), as necessary and I'm always able to sell my fairly well maintained laptops for about 3/4 of the actual price, ensuring I essentially get a nice, big discount on a new MBP. Joel "To The" Johnson found out that the iPhone 3G market works quite similarly, selling his abused 16GB 3G for $300.

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