A riot broke out at Apple's Sanlitun store in Beijing last weekend as unscupulous resellers clamoured to beat regular consumers to get their hands on the iPad 2 and white iPhone 4.
The increasingly common practise of ‘grey trading’ in China sees resellers deliberately buying up commercial quantities of products, forcing regular customers to bargain with them to get hot items.
A confrontation erupted between staff and a large crowd of people after the front door of the store in The Village was smashed.
A 'foreign' staff member is reported to have begun lashing out at the crowd with a metal bar, sending at least four people to hospital. Police arrived soon after with dogs, although there have been no reports of any arrests.
Queues outside the store had reportedly grown so long that people were selling their places in the line.
The iPad 2 went on sale in Beijing and Shanghai last Friday.
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