Will Thieves and Dealers Ruin the iPad 3 Launch?

With demand expected to reach an all-time high, the iPad 3 is bound to be one of the hottest items in 2012. This is great for Apple AAPL, which can never have enough home runs. But is it good for the consumer? Apple loyalists surely want their favorite company to be successful. But at what cost do they want that success to be achieved? To be clear, consumers are not to blame for the problems. But it is our rush to get new electronics that sparked a new era of greed. In some cases, it has even led to violence. It all started when the Xbox 360 fetched several hundred more than the $400 MSRP on eBay EBAY. Some consoles sold for well over $1,000. When word spread that wealthy consumers were willing to spend a ton of money to get their hands on the latest Xbox, criminals and sleazy entrepreneurs began to take notice. Five years ago, GameSpot reported on the many thefts that surrounded the launch of Sony's SNE PlayStation 3. Retailing for $500 and $600 (depending on the model), PlayStation 3 was one of the most expensive game consoles ever released. It was also in very short supply in the fall of 2006. Having witnessed the success of the Xbox 360 auctions on eBay, criminals all across the country made their way to various GameStop GME, Wal-Mart WMT and Best Buy BBY locations, looking to rob the stores or consumers of their consoles and cash. During two of the more severe violent encounters, one customer was shot while another was beaten by five men. Miraculously, this level of violence did not carry over to the launch of the iPad 2, the Apple device that proved to be the hardest to acquire. But at launch, people were unaware of the demand surrounding the tablet. Criminals may have simply found out about the iPad 2 when it was too late. Now that Apple's second tablet has proven to be a colossal success, and now that the iPhone 4S is going for more than $1,000 on eBay, I can't help but fear that the iPad 3 launch will be met with a degree of criminal activity. If there is any positive to this potential mess, it is that most retailers seemed to have learned a valuable lesson from the violence that accompanied the PlayStation 3 launch. I've attended a couple of product launches at the Apple Store, and both of them felt very safe and secure. In fact, at the iPhone 4S launch at Somerset Mall in Troy, MI, security guards were stationed at several parts of the line. But even if the iPad 3 launch is safe, it is still going to be met with thousands of dealers who will take advantage of Apple's two-device policy. Officially, the company allows consumers to buy two of the same device per day; unofficially, there have been reports of many more being sold to a single customer. Whether you agree or disagree with this policy, it's important to remember that for every iDevice a dealer acquires, Apple has one less iDevice to sell to legitimate customers. On the bright side, most of the iPhone 4S launch attendees came to buy one phone for themselves. I did, however, speak to two dealers and a couple of suspicious customers who couldn't come up with a single reason why they wanted the phone, but were buying one anyway. While some of you reading this might respond by saying, “Hey, that sounds just like a regular Apple customer!” the truth is that most Apple shoppers can tell you why they want Product X. Dealers can too, actually – they just don't want to admit it. Follow me @LouisBedigian