MacRumors notes that Apple’s iPad 2 3G has finally officially gone on sale in China. It’s an interesting step (especially for those who insist we’ll see an iPad 3 before the end of the year), but how will they tell the difference from the millions of fakes?
It seems pretty unlikely that Apple would launch into a market as absolutely immense as China if there was a refresh on the immediate cards, after all. Still, based on those fake Apple stores and my own anecdotal evidence from my recent sojourn to Shanghai, they’ll face something of an uphill battle when it comes to outselling the fakes. Certainly, Apple’s stuff is likely to be slightly better built and packaged — I saw no shortage of units that happily described themselves as “iPhonc 4″, for example — but the fakes appear to be very popular indeed, and that included plenty of tablets. [Macrumors]
Peter
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 10:41 AMAlternate title: Walled Garden for the Great Wall
light487
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 12:04 PMNot only are the fakes popular (and cheaper) but in many cases they are better. For instance, a few years back when the iPhone 3 first came out; within weeks there were fakes all over China and some of these fakes were fully supporting everything the iPhone had with the ability to have dual-SIM cards..
The one thing China lacks is invention.. they have no problem innovating on existing ideas but should they ever get to the point where their invention-skills meet at the same level as their innovation-skills, they will be certainly a force to reckon with. Until then, we’ll just have to settle for cheap fakes of other peoples’ ideas.