China - page 33

You might want to check your iTunes receipts: according to the AFP, hacked iTunes accounts — possibly yours! — are available for sale all over China for prices as low as just a few bucks.

It’s close to Christmas, but not so close that there’s no stupid to report, so here’s your Yuletide dose: French site La Vie and photohournalist Jordan Pouille are again claiming that Foxconn is Hell on Earth.

Not that you’d come to that conclusion yourself, as the photoessay itself consigns itself to bookending shots of the barred windows at Foxconn’s dormitories (to prevent suicides) with shots of workers going to work, performing coordinated dances, shopping at malls, listening to pop music and shopping for food. What an Auschwitz, right?

Chinese knockoff maker DragonFly has just made their already shameless MacBook clone a little more so: while the 14-inch netbook already adhered closely enough to the Ive aesthetic to be mistaken for a real MacBook Pro by the Magoo-like, they’ve now gone even farther by replacing the original DragonFly logo with Apple’s own… plus Hackintoshing the notebook in the factory to run Snow Leopard. It even comes with a fake MagSafe charger!

Try this in America and Apple’s legal team would cram your head so forcibly up your posterior that you’d give a vomitous birth unto yourself, but DragonFly hails from China, so they’ll probably be fine. $436 will buy you one on the Beijing electronics blackmarket.

The new 11.6-inch MacBook Air is extremely netbook-like in dimensions, if not in specs or price, but if that $999 tag doesn’t do it for you, the gadget sweatshops of China would be happy to sell you a Hackintoshable MacBook Air clone for just $260, right down to the official Apple logo.

Earlier this week, Apple finally launched a local version of its online retail store in China.. and within 10 hours managed to completely sell out of all available iPhone 4s. As 9to5Mac notes, since Apple’s attempted on cracking down on iPhone 4 scalping in its retail stores by forcing anyone looking to buy a handset from them directly online, this effectively means there’s not a single iPhone to be had in the country… unless you’re willing to pay a scalper his premium.

Although there are a lot of gadget makers looking to come out with their own answers to the iPad in the coming months — most notably RIM with the BlackBerry Playbook and Samsung with the Galaxy Tab — you’ve got to give them credit: the tablets they are releasing aren’t just iPad clones.

You can’t say the same for this tablet though, plucked out of a cheap electronics shop in the alleys of Shaghai: it’s an iPad clone through and through.

The iPad is synonymous with Apple, but according to Taiwan-based company Proview, Cupertino is stomping all over their trademark on the ‘IPad’ name… and they want Apple to pay up.

You’ve always wanted to paint your face up like a singer at the Beijing opera, right?

No? You sure?

This isn’t a 3GS tarted up by Colorware, it’s the “iPhonc,” a little no-name Chinese cell phone looking to capitalize upon a bit of brand confusion with a stolen Apple logo (albeit, one with a reversed stem) and the elimination of a single stroke from the product name’s typeface.

I would be curious one day to pick the brain of one of these iPhone knock-off designers. They really are ingenious. If only they used that same ingenuity to design capable smartphones instead of dancing around trademark infringement.

[via 9to5Mac]

Foxconn, the largest tech manufacturer in the world, is under fire yet again for alleged worker abuse… this time as part of a survey commissioned by the iPod maker itself.

As reported to China’s state-run Global Times, several universities working on Foxconn’s behalf in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have surveyed 1,736 workers. The results when compiled into the final report are shocking, to say the least.

In theory, officially introducing China up to the charms of the iPhone should have been a coup for Apple, potentially generating the sale of millions of handsets in the largest market on Earth. But the reality looks far bleaker: according to data from the official Chinese online iPhone store, Taobao.com, only five iPhones were sold in the first two weeks of its online availability.

Taobao.com is not the only place selling iPhones: Apple’s carrier partner in China, China Unicom, is also selling iPhones, but has not released official numbers. That said, Taobao.com’s numbers should be viewed grimly: it’s the largest and most frequented electronics site in China… the Chinese equivalent of Amazon.com.

Image via Paul Stamatiou
It’s an open secret that there are legions of iPhone owners who operate their phones outside of Apple’s officially sanctioned networks AT&T, O2, Orange, and T-Mobile Germany, either because they live outside of the countries where the iPhone is on sale or because they’re aware that AT&T has terrible coverage.

What is less well-known is just how big the problem has gotten. BusinessWeek reported last week that 800,000 to 1 million iPhones have gone AWOL after legitimate purchase. And now this weekend, analyst In-Stat claims that 400,000 of those iPhone are all in operation on China Mobile, the largest carrier in Mainland China.

This makes a few things clear:

1. Apple should get a distribution deal in China as fast as they can. They’re just leaving money on the table right now.
2. Apple would be making more money if they hadn’t gone with an exclusive network for each market. If the iPhone ran GSM and CDMA and was available far and wide, they would be making more money and they wouldn’t need to concern themselves with unlocking. By getting into bed with AT&T and making a part of its revenue dependent on “legitimate use,” Apple has taken an anti-consumer stance that will hurt it in the long run. Unlocked iPhones are only a problem because they depend on an outdated business model. Apple should be embarrassed for taking part in it.

Via iLounge