Submitted by Marshall Walker on
Chinese merchants are offering a cheap alternative to the gold iPhone 5s, and the new marketing technique seems to be working. Online stores like taobao.com are selling $2 gold stickers that transform any iPhone into a gold iPhone. The Wall Street Journal reports that "thousands of the stickers have been sold" in China, where " the color gold symbolizes wealth."
Merchants have been advertising the stickers as an affordable alternative to buying an entirely new phone. One ads reads: “Dear, you don’t need to sell your kidney for the new iPhone. Instead of paying 5288 yuan, you only need to spend 35 yuan to make your iPhone 5 look like a golden iPhone 5s in seconds.”
A 16GB iPhone 5s is around $863.84 in China, because mobile phones are not subsidized by cellular providers like they are in the US.
