Tech: In the U.S., people smuggle drugs. In China, they smuggle iPads
- 14 Chinese housewives were arrested for smuggling lots of tech devices into China
- 88 the number of iPads the fourteen women had, roughly enough to create an iPad fort
- 340 the number of phones they had; it was a total haul worth roughly $143,000 source
- » Why the demand? Simple. The only version of the iPad sold in China is the wi-fi version. The 3G version (sold in Hong Kong) is in very high demand as a result. Plus, China has recently started taxing iPads brought in from Hong Kong, and on the other end, smugglers have been recruiting people without criminal records to make the runs from Hong Kong to China (for around $30 a run). We end this post with a visual image; imagine a woman with 65 smartphones wrapped around her chest and 20 more in her handbag. Yes, this actually happened.