The campaigns around the elections for governor in California are getting more aggressive the closer we get to the date. Radio commercials are just calling the other parties on their plans or no plans, and banner campaigns are getting more ugly in their message.
I just ran into the banner below, where Meg Whitman is confronted with her 10 years she worked at eBay. It’s creative, almost funny, but a clear infringement on the eBay brand.
Update: Right after I published the post here, there are relevant ads on my site for the campaign against Meg Whitman:
Disclaimer: I don’t have any political opinion when it comes to the elections for governor as I cannot vote in the state of California, nor for the general elections in the USA.
For the last couple of weeks I have been working on a story around the iPad exports through sales on eBay.com. With the story picked up by The New York Times and Gizmodo. I sent the following post to my buddies of The Next Web as a guest post. In the past i've done some guest posts before, but never for a large tech blog like TheNextWeb.com.
With Apple selling more that 1 million iPads just in the US, we were wondering how many have been sold on the global eBay marketplace to buyers not located in the US. Essentially we are talking about free market forces that are at work, determining the price of an iPad on the global marketplace through matching demand and supply.
Of all the iPads sold in the first two weeks on eBay, the majority went to buyers outside of the US. Just 35% of the iPads sold on eBay in the first two weeks, were sold domestically. The low percentage of domestic sales probably has got to do with the fact Apple did a great job keeping all the stores fully stocked. There have not been widely reported shortages for iPads across the US. In the past, any shortages in products have always been a reason of increased sales on eBay of the product!
The Brits imported the most iPads, where 550 iPads were imported. Of the top 20 importers of iPads, the small city state of Singapore imported 77 iPads in the first two weeks.
Premiums Paid for iPad
From the data, we can see who is more prepared to pull their wallet to buy an iPad.
Buyers from the United Arab Emirates were prepared to buy the 64GB iPad model at a premium of more than $500 over the normal retail price.
The announcement of the delay in International Launch of the iPad had a shock effect on the demand on the iPads sold on the US eBay website. Number of iPads sold to International countries jumped. The price for an iPad on April 14th skyrocketed for buyers outside of the US.
Some of the commenter's on Gizmodo actually did sell some iPads internationally at a profit:
Picked up two 64 GB ipads at launch, flipped one on UK e-bay immediately (only 2 other ipads were for sale on .co.uk at the time).
I wound up making $100 and a free ipad ($1500)... timing is everything
Sold mine to someone in Spain and made enough profit to upgrade from the 16gb to the 32gb 3G model. Gotta love the ebay
International launch of the iPad
For the International launch of the iPad, we will be keeping a close eye on the numbers. What the data from the first two weeks tells us, is that the iPad is going to be a big success in the European countries.
By that time, we will keep you posted with an update to these numbers.
Update: AppAdvice has a great overview on the International prices for the ipad at launch.
After having played with the iPad myself, after I got one as a present from my wife, I’m totally hooked. What an awesome machine. It appears there are more people around the world who want to play with the newest gadget toy, as Edible Apple is reporting. Read more on Techmeme here. People from around the world are bidding on iPads on the US eBay site.
The iPad is the latest and greatest from Apple, and for the time being, it’s only available in the US. But come on, folks, the international iPad rollout is just a few weeks away. So why in the world are some people paying as much as $5,000 to have an iPad shipped to their corner of the world? One customer from the U.K reportedly spent $5,500 for a spankin’ new iPad.
This triggered me to look at the number of searches placed on eBay.com for the keyword “iPad”. Obviously you can see three important surges of search traffic of people looking for the product:
Apple’s announcement of the iPad January 27
Apple’s announcement of the launch date of the iPad March 12
The actual day the Apple iPad went on sale in the Apple stores April 3
In the marketplace economic theory, Demand and Supply will always be equal in the perfect marketplace. However, as the iPad is not available yet in other countries but the US, the demand for the item oversees pushes the price up on the US based iPad marketplace.
Supply and demand are always equal as they are the two sides of the same set of transactions, and discussions of "imbalances" are a muddled and indirect way of referring to price. However, in an unmeasurable qualitative sense, demand for an item (such as goods or services) refers to the market pressure from people trying to buy it. They will "bid" money for the item, while sellers offer the item for money. When the bid matches the offer, a transaction can easily occur.
Makes perfect sense right…
So get your Apple iPad from your local Apple store right now, and list the item on eBay for shipping worldwide, and capitalize on the opportunity. You can list 8 iPads per week! (Announcements).
The other day, when I arrived with my bicycle at work, I saw there was a sign added to the eBay logo. The US Classifieds site re-launched. I stopped, grabbed my camera, and took some cool shots of the sign. As you can see, the weather was beautiful, but there was still dew on the eBay letters.
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US $600.00
