HONG KONG — It was last summer when fake Apple stores began to appear in China, lookalike shops seemingly so genuine that even some of the employees thought they were working at authentic Apple outlets.
In all, at least 25 phony Apple stores were located and shut down in Yunnan Province. A video tour of one fake store, in the city of Kunming, is embedded below.
But such is the power of the Apple name and brand in China that an enterprising company there has been making one-burner gas stoves with the once-bitten Apple logo and a label that says “iphone.”
Stove, cellphone, whatever. “Siri, call my daughter, play me some Springsteen and heat up my soup.”
A number of tech Web sites have followed up a story in the Chinese press that said police officials recently seized nearly 700 of the stoves in a warehouse raid in Wuhan in central China. The cookers were apparently seized because they were unsafe, not because they were ripping off the iPhone brand and the Apple logo.
Tosh Fieldsend, in a comment on Facebook, said the iPhone stove appeared “handy for making iPho.’’
The wacky stove story is merely the latest installment in the Apple fakery industry in China. (A list of the top 10 Apple knockoffs of 2011 is here, on the site of M.I.C. Gadget.)
My colleague Michael Wilson, in a recent post on the Bits blog, said increasing numbers of fake iPhones and iPods are hitting the streets in America — and apparently they’re coming from China.
“There are some really sophisticated ones coming out of China that some people actually prefer,” said Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of CultofMac.com, a technology news site devoted to Apple. “It has a replaceable battery, so you can swap the battery out, which you can’t do on the iPhone.”
And as my colleague in Shanghai, David Barboza, reported last week, Apple has gone to court over “ allegations that it does not own rights to the iPad trademark in China, a challenge that threatens to prevent the company from selling one of its most popular products in one of its fastest growing markets.’’
A Chinese firm, Proview International, had successfully blocked the sales of the iPad in several smaller Chinese cities, and getting the authorities in various cities to seize iPads from some retailers. A court ruled last Thursday that Apple could continue its sales, but a lawyer representing Proview said the company would appeal.
David said Proview is a small maker of computer displays “that has already filed for bankruptcy but seems determined to force Apple to cough up a fortune for the rights to the trademark.’’