After Making Over $100,000, New York Teen In Legal Trouble For Selling White iPhone 4 Conversion Kits
In a startup story that sounds like it could grow to rival The Social Network, a Queens, New York teenager name Fei Lam has made $130,000 selling white iPhone 4 conversion kits. But these aren’t homemade parts engineered to provide you with a makeshift white model; instead, Lam has a contact with some sort of relationship with Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer that provides Apple with iPhone parts.
Lam is a senior in high school with plans to attend NYU to study computer science if the money is there. And luckily, a lot of it probably is now. He’s sold over 470 conversion kits, with the full package going for $279, and individual panels for $135 and $169.
However, this isn’t a startup story with a resolved ending just yet. Yesterday, Lam received a letter accusing him of selling stolen goods. The email came from a private investigator, and Lam states that he is “100 percent sure” the parts he’s selling were not stolen . . . It will be very interesting to see how this shakes down. The conversion units are currently available from WhiteiPhone4Now.com, but it’s easy to understand why Apple would be interested in putting an end to this. Having just further delayed the official white unit until Spring of 2011, they must be holding on to hope that some crazy fans will wait patiently and then fork over the money once the ridiculously long wait time comes to an end.
As far as I’m concerned, long live Lam’s operation. Apple has no business expecting us to wait nearly a year from their device’s launch for a white model. It should have just been scrapped all together, but in lieu of that, this sort of thing was bound to happen.
Commenting on his early success, Lam says, “I’m very thankful, cause for months I was struggling for an idea that would bootstrap my first start-up and help pay for college.” He’s definitely onto something lucrative. Now let’s just see how long it lasts.
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Tristan Thomas
