This Apple has an odd taste ...
Source: Agencies |
01:10 UTC+8 July 22, 2011
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT looks just like a sleek Apple store. Sales assistants in blue T-shirts with the company's logo chat to customers. Signs advertising the iPad 2 hang from the white walls. Outside, the famous logo sits next to the words "Apple Store."
And that's the clue that it's fake.
An American who lives in Kunming, Yunnan Province in southwest China, said yesterday that she and her husband stumbled on three shops masquerading as bona fide Apple stores in the city a few days ago. She took photos and posted them on her BirdAbroad blog.
The three stores are not among the authorized resellers listed on Apple Inc's website.
The maker of the iPhone and other hit gadgets has four company stores in China - two in Shanghai and two in Beijing - and various official resellers. Apple's Beijing office declined to comment.
The 27-year-old blogger, who declined to be named, said the set-up of the stores was so convincing that the employees themselves seemed to believe they worked for Apple.
"It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area.
The employees were even wearing those blue T-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks," she wrote on her blog.
"But some things were just not right: The stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn't been painted properly. Apple never writes 'Apple Store' on its signs - it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit."
A worker at the fake Apple store on Zhengyi Road in Kunming, which most of the photos of the BirdAbroad blog show, said they were an "Apple store" before hanging up the phone.
The manager of an authorized reseller in Kunming, who gave only his surname, Zhang, said most customers had no idea the stores are fake.
Some of the staff in the stores "can't even operate computers properly or tell you all the functions of the mobile phone," he said.
Apple said this week that China was "very key" to its record earnings and revenue in the quarter that ended in June.
Revenue was up more than 600 percent from a year earlier to US$3.8 billion in the area comprising Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, said Apple COO Timothy Cook.
"I firmly believe that we're just scratching the surface right now," Cook said.
The company plans to open two more stores in China - in Shanghai and in Hong Kong - by the end of the year.
And that's the clue that it's fake.
An American who lives in Kunming, Yunnan Province in southwest China, said yesterday that she and her husband stumbled on three shops masquerading as bona fide Apple stores in the city a few days ago. She took photos and posted them on her BirdAbroad blog.
The three stores are not among the authorized resellers listed on Apple Inc's website.
The maker of the iPhone and other hit gadgets has four company stores in China - two in Shanghai and two in Beijing - and various official resellers. Apple's Beijing office declined to comment.
The 27-year-old blogger, who declined to be named, said the set-up of the stores was so convincing that the employees themselves seemed to believe they worked for Apple.
"It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area.
The employees were even wearing those blue T-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks," she wrote on her blog.
"But some things were just not right: The stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn't been painted properly. Apple never writes 'Apple Store' on its signs - it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit."
A worker at the fake Apple store on Zhengyi Road in Kunming, which most of the photos of the BirdAbroad blog show, said they were an "Apple store" before hanging up the phone.
The manager of an authorized reseller in Kunming, who gave only his surname, Zhang, said most customers had no idea the stores are fake.
Some of the staff in the stores "can't even operate computers properly or tell you all the functions of the mobile phone," he said.
Apple said this week that China was "very key" to its record earnings and revenue in the quarter that ended in June.
Revenue was up more than 600 percent from a year earlier to US$3.8 billion in the area comprising Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, said Apple COO Timothy Cook.
"I firmly believe that we're just scratching the surface right now," Cook said.
The company plans to open two more stores in China - in Shanghai and in Hong Kong - by the end of the year.
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