It's safe to say that the iPhone is a big deal. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were a huge success for Apple's final quarter, and a large part of that was the rise of the Chinese iPhone market. However, local regulations made iPhones an expensive but highly-desired luxury in China.
That's why smugglers iPhones into the country is common, such as this Chinese man who got caught with 94 iPhones (6 and 6 Pluses) secretly to his body over the weekend.
A man was pulled aside by Chinese custom officials while going through Futian Port after they noted how his "weird walking posture, joint stiffness (and) muscle tension," The Huffington Post reported reported. After making him go through a metal detector, the man was pulled over by Chinese customs officials They found that he had taped 94 iPhones (6 and 6 Pluses) to his body.
The man said he came from Hong Kong, where the phone would have cost less. 9to5Mac estimates that the man had more than $50,000 worth of product on his body.
While the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is available in China, the device is extremely expensive. An American iPhone 6 without a contract costs $649, but the Chinese iPhone costs $847. This price difference may not sound like a big deal for Americans, but it is a significant amount when you consider that the average Chinese employee makes slightly more than $4,700 a year.
iPhone smuggling is not a new practice. 9To5Mac reported in November that the Chinese Mafia has been hiring Americans to buy additional iPhones to send to China after Chinese regulations delayed the local release of the iPhone 6.
