17-year-old student in China reportedly sold his kidney to black market organ dealers and used the proceeds to buy Apple products, suggesting that the company's marketing in the country is enormously effective.
iPad 2 but could not afford it," said the boy, known as Zheng, to the Shanghai Daily. "A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan."Zheng reportedly eventually received 22,000 yuan, or about $3,400.
The boy's mother became suspicious when he came home with "a new laptop and Apple handset," according to Shenzhen TV. The discrepancy between "handset" and "iPad" is unexplained.
The surgery reportedly took place on April 28, which would have given Zheng a few days to recover before braving the long and occasionally violent lines of Apple fans waiting to buy the new tablet on May 6, when it launched in China.
One hopes he didn't buy a gray market version imported from the U.S. -- people reportedly paid about double the U.S. price for early access to the tablet before it was officially available in the country.
Apple's iPad 2 has been hard enough to obtain in the U.S., even for people who didn't need to sell an organ to pay for it. Wait times have stretched into weeks for online orders, and retailers have reportedly had trouble keeping the tablets in stock.
But Apple products appear to have a special cachet for the Chinese. In April, Chinese villagers in Malaysia reportedly scoured stores selling paper versions of the iPad 2 for burning in a traditional funerary rite. Those who missed out had to settle for paper first-gen iPads or Samsung Galaxy Tabs instead.
