虽然有防暴警察、警犬、保安和金属分流栏的保护，但苹果（Apple）还是无法控制蜂拥而至的人流。上周五早晨，苹果香港零售店刚刚开门，急不可耐的购机者就疯狂冲上店里的螺旋形玻璃楼梯。

    仅经苹果认可的排队人数就达到大约1,250人，他们获准陆续进入门店购机，还有超过2,000人聚集在店外虎视眈眈。据称绝大部分排在队伍前列的购机者都是黄牛党和来自南亚地区的专业“排队党”（点击链接了解详情）。许多二道贩子也混迹其中，他们身着连帽衫，提着装有5部iPhone的袋子从店里快步冲出。他们只需将这些手机倒卖到香港无处不在的黑市，就能立即获得丰厚的利润。

    截至到中午，即苹果零售店开始营业5小时后，所有iPhone 4S已经被扫荡一空。

    这是饥饿营销学的典范。专注于中国市场的科技博客M.I.C. Gadget对此进行了详细记录。登陆该博客网站可以浏览现场照片集。

    译者：项航

    Even with the support of Chinese riot police, police dogs, private security guards and an elaborate grid of metal barricades, Apple (AAPL) could barely contain the chaos when the gates of the Hong Kong Apple Store opened Friday morning and customers began to run up the store's spiral glass staircase.

    An Apple-sanctioned queue of roughly 1,250 were allowed to file in, while a larger crowd of more than 2,000 pressed for a chance. Many of the first customers were reported to be scalpers and professional line-sitters from South Asia (see here), and indeed resellers in hoodies could be seen rushing from the store with bags of five iPhones each to flip for a quick profit in Hong Kong's extensive gray market.

    By noon, five hours after the gates opened, Apple had run out of stock.

    It was a lesson in the economics of scarcity, documented at every stage by the Chinese blog M.I.C. Gadget. You can view its collection of photographs here.