The Apple iPad was released a little over a month ago in the U.S. and just this week in Canada and Japan. The starting price is about $550USD. Unless you’re in China, where you can get knockoffs for as little as $50.
The city of Shenzhen in China is well known for its black and gray markets and street vendors selling everything knockoff. Popular items nowadays include various forms of the iPad. Knockoffs, called “shanzhai” (meaning “fake”) of everything under the sun are everywhere.
Probably the most copy-cat is the iPed (bet you thought the title was a typo, eh?), which comes in a box that looks exactly like Apple’s and has a layout very much like the iPad’s too. It runs with an Intel chip and Google’s open-source Android OS and features many of the same mutli-media functions. It sells for about $105USD.
Another popular ripoff has no official name, but is a Shanzhai iPad running Windows Mobile and featuring much of what the iPad offers. It is markedly heavier and of obvious lower quality, however, and sells for just over $50USD.
Other iPad knockoffs run Linux and some are even bare units that come out of the box OS-free, allowing the user to install whatever they’d like. Most are similar in function to the iPad and look as identical as possible. The most popular, however, is definitely the aforementioned iPed device. Unlike the iPad, the iPed plays Flash. SNAP!
In fact, for about $200 American, you can get both an iPad and iPhone knockoff – often from the same vendor. No warranties included, however.
