Should Apple Be Involved into the Trouble of "Shanzhai"?

As tablet PCs are becoming popular and most vendors plan to ship more than 700,000 units every quarter, this increasing demand would really cause several problems, such as: sources from upstream component makers pointed out that several components such as touchscreen, battery and chassis may face shortages after tablet PC shipments begin. More and more Chinese companies, which are well known for producing knock-off phones, or called "shanzhai," or "bandit" phones, and sometimes take the form of counterfeit iPhones or other popular handsets. They not only take competing on price but also on design.



There is a China online shopping mall, which offers tablet PC called Apad Classic 7 inch Google Android 2.1 720P HDMI Camera Plating Tablet PC (http://www.pickegg.com/wholesale/classic-7-inch-google-android-2-1-720p-hdmi-camera-plating-tablet-mid-256mb-4g-silver.html) at a very low price of $159.99, which makes people even can not believe it.



There is another company which sells a tablet PC like Apple’s newly announced iPad may sue the U.S. Company over the similar design between the devices. Things seem so amazed! The company said it started selling its P88 tablet last year. The tablet PC weighs more than the iPad and has much shorter battery life at just over one hour during active use, compared to Apple’s stated battery life of 10 hours for the iPad. But both devices use touch screens that have a black border and a similar size, at 10.2 inches for the P88 and 9.7 inches for the iPad.



The company said their tablet is sold in the U.S., but declined to say at which outlets. And they announced they were not ruling out a lawsuit against Apple, as to the P88, they were the first designed, and they are not "shanzhai" anyway.



Apple has not said if the iPad will be sold in China. Local carrier China Unicom started selling the iPhone last year, but gray-market versions of the device were already widely sold in China.



China’s gray market for electronic devices also reacted quickly to Apple’s announcement of the iPad last week. Some users on Taobao.com, a Chinese auction and retail site, are taking pre-orders for iPads they will first obtain in Hong Kong or elsewhere. Popular devices such as the iPhone or the Hero from Taiwan’s High Tech Computer (HTC) are often brought into China informally and sold there online or at electronics bazaars.



Japanese electronics company Fujitsu has also said it owns the rights to the name "iPad," raising another possible legal challenge for the Apple device.