Entrepreneurial New Yorkers have turned a tidy iProfit on the iPhone, with the coveted must-have, do-everything gizmo commanding a whopping $1,000 on the Internet.
Forward-thinking folks who lined up – some for days – to snatch an iPhone on Friday are turning a cool $350-per-phone profit for their trouble after retailers around the city sold out of iPhones.
“The money’s good,” said Paul Ruvinsky, a 19-year-old Long Island construction worker who has already flipped two phones for a $700 net gain.
“When I was in the city [last week] I saw people lined up corner to corner. I knew the iPhone was coming out.”
So, along with three pals, he rushed to the Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island, where only 10 people were lined up, and purchased eight phones for $650 each, with tax.
Ruvinsky so far has managed to hawk two phones for $1,000 each after placing ads on eBay and Craigslist.
He says it’s a no-lose situation because he can return the phones with Apple’s refund policy.
The city’s Apple stores and AT&T outlets get only a handful of phones each day, which are sold on a first-come, first-served basis.
Apple’s SoHo store sold its last 100 phones yesterday by mid-afternoon, according to sales manager Chris DiGiovanni.
“I walked in [Saturday] and got one,” said Sumio Sone, 42, a TV producer from Manhattan, “If I had a hard time, I would be on Craigslist.”
Nationwide, some 500,000 iPhones have been sold since they debuted on Friday, fattening Apple’s bottom line.
Trading in Apple Inc. stock jumped 5 percent to close at $127.17 Tuesday. The company makes a 55 percent profit for every $599 phone sold.