Fake Apple iPad PCs are widely on sale in China. In truth, very near offers were available much earlier this year. It was just that no one knew exactly what the finished product would look like.
Now it is difficult to find a real one because of the huge demand but as many copies as you like are available in the electronics malls of Shenzhen, the southern Chinese boomtown near the border with Hong Kong. And, by extension, if you know where to go, it is readily available almost any major town in Austrai.
They are not exactly iPads. Sometimes a little thicker. Running a version of Windows and costing about $410 although by shopping around you can get that price down considerably.
The real version of the 10-inch entertainment device, on which one can read books, play music and videos and surf the Internet, sold more than 500,000 in its first week alone, and continued strong U.S. demand has led Apple to delay the product’s international launch to the end of April.
The Washington Post reported that Edward Yu, chief executive of Beijing-based researcher Analysys International, said, "China is basically a market that has the ability to clone everything, so it’s really not surprising. I don’t think piracy is a bad thing for the iPad given that China has a huge population, maybe the clone iPads will give more of the potential users a look and feel." And it is that widely held attitude which is the cause for the totally open and always prevalent piracy.