Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Bootz]

Massive crowds gather in Hong Kong for iPhone 4S launch

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt November 10, 2011: 3:59 PM ET

Police were called in Wednesday to restore order after fighting broke out



Funneling line-sitters into holding pens. Image: Andrew Leyden

"I can't begin to accurately describe the scene on the walkways outside the Hong Kong Apple Store."

So begins the dispatch by Penguin Six's Andrew Leyden writing 24 hours before the first scheduled launch of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 4S in China.

According to Leyden, police broke up a disorganized mob of 400 line sitters Wednesday night amid rising tensions and scattered fighting. On Thursday, police and security officials, using "crush barricades," forced the crowd into a series of 45 holding pens of 20 sitters each.

"It's not Apple fans at all," Leyden writes in the text accompanying the video posted below. "It's line sitters and smugglers. They'll make $100US per phone, which is a week's wages for some of these low income people. Buy 5 phones and they make a month's salary."

"I'd be shocked ," he concludes, "if the PTU Riot Police is not deployed tomorrow. Should Apple run out of phones, as it appears likely, I would not want to be anywhere near that walkway when the line sitters are told the bad news. 'Ugly' is too polite a word for that scene."