I read a comment on my twitter timeline sometime back. It read “how long before China fakes an entire city”. Looking at how well someone had copied authentic Apple Store in Kunming, China, the comment wasn’t really out of place. China is known for ripoffs, be it cars, accessories or mobiles. But faking an entire store, wow!
Chinese officials have now swung into action. They have visited as many as ‘five’ fake Apple Stores in Kunming itself and have ordered two of them to shut down. The three stores that were visited by BirdAborad have NOT been shut as they had a official license to trade and were selling official Apple products (not counterfeits).
While we see some action by Chinese officials, this is odd. The stores reported by BirdAbroad are certainly infringing Apple’s IP and are imitating authentic Apple Stores. Given the fact that the shows were a total (beautiful as termed in her original post by BirdAbroad), guess Apple would sooner or later get into action in China. They have made no comments so far.
China is a $5 billion market for Apple and it’s growing a massive pace given Cupertino’s increased investment in China. Apple has it’s own stores in Beijing and Shanghai, but they certainly have plans to go China wide soon. Apple is known to defend its IP vigorously. If I were Apple, I would be more worried about fake Apple products being sold and not the fake stores to being with.