Apple’s iPad has won rave early reviews but its US launch yesterday is not welcome news for the Chinese maker of a similar-looking device that has already been on sale for nearly eight months.
Wu Xiaolong (吳小龍), general manager at Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial Co (深圳巨龍兄弟實業), said the company had already lost a major order for its iPad-like touchscreen “P88,” which was launched in August, months before Apple’s product.
“Our products are more expensive than theirs. There had been a Canadian university planning to buy our tablet PCs for their students, but they cancelled the order to shift to the iPad,” Wu said.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
The company made headlines in January when it suggested Apple’s iPad looked like a copy of the P88, which was on show last year at the Internationale Funkausstellung consumer electronics fair in Berlin.
Wu declined to give sales figures for the P88, which sells for about US$570 — compared with the iPad’s US$499 entry-level price — but said the company in southern China was producing 3,000 units a day.
“We sold to a number of overseas markets in Europe and North America, including Germany, the UK, France and Canada. We also have distributors in many provinces in China, including Shanghai,” he said.
However, there was no sign of the P88 or other iPad clones at the four-floor CyberMart (賽博數碼廣場) in downtown Shanghai on Friday, although plenty of cloned iPods and other products were on display.
Shanzai.com (山寨網), which tracks China’s electronics industry, said dozens of iPad clones have been “available on the streets of Shenzhen for months.”
Apple has yet to announce a launch date for the iPad in China, but Huang Ting, who operates one of CyberMart’s more than 100 stalls, said confidently that she expected to be selling the devices in about a week.
“We have to send someone to line up and buy them in the US and then bring them back to China. The 16GB iPad will sell for about 5,000 yuan [US$730],” she said from behind a counter showcasing rows of iPhones and iPods.
Eager customers were paying a 500 yuan deposit, she said.
“We already have quite a few bookings,” Huang said.
China’s gray market for Apple products developed to meet demand from consumers eager to get their hands on iPhones, which officially only went on sale in China in October — more than two years after it was launched in the US.
In the meantime, 1.5 million smuggled iPhones flooded into the world’s biggest mobile market before Apple reached an agreement with a Chinese network operator.
Apple China officials did not immediately respond to queries on Friday.
A search for iPad on Taobao.com (淘寶網) — China’s answer to eBay, turned up 1,600 adverts, mostly from vendors offering to ship the tablet computer from the US.
But many on the e-commerce site were also selling iPad clones and look-alikes, including the P88.
One site compared the iPad and the P88’s specifications side-by-side.
Although thicker and heavier than the iPad, the P88 boasts a slightly larger screen, faster processor, larger memory and, unlike the iPad, has USB ports and a video camera. Other iPad competitors have added features such as global positioning service.
Apple hopes its device will carve out a niche between smartphones and laptop computers.
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