In 2010, before the real things hit the shelves, knock-offs of Apple iPhone 4's and iPad were widely available in malls in major Chinese cities, in many cases with features that weren’t available on the Apple versions such as removable batteries and places for two SIM cards (allowing users to have two telephones numbers) in the case of the new iPhones . The phones, known as Shanzhaiji (‘Mountain Bandit Phones’) have touch screen and apps just like the real iPhones and have the Apple logo but sell for hundreds of dollars less. [Source: Keith Richburg,, Washington Post, August 2010]
A vendor who was selling fake iPhone 4s for about $100 in Beijing told the Washington Post, “You can’t tell the difference between this and the real thing.” He said he was selling the fakes at a rate of over 1,000 a month and even though he offered a money guarantee no one had returned a phone, The phones he sold even used real iPhone accessories such as chargers and earphones. Fake iPad were selling for $150 in Shanghai in August 2010 as opposed to $1,000 for the real ones.
Some pirated electronics attempt to be outright copies; others close facsimiles. On the later you can find names like “iPhooe,” “Samsnug,” “Motolora,” “Suny-Ericssin” and “Nckia.” The cheapest iPhone fake is simply called ‘phone.’ On his concerns about being raided by authorities the vendor told the Washington Post, “The police won’t crack down on us—it’s not guns or drugs, why bother? The cellphones aren’t illegal. If its illegal, why is such a big market still open here?” According to BDA China, a Beijing-based business advisory firm, 38 percent of the handsets sold in China are fakes. Items like iPhones are especially in demand as fakes as the real versions often are much more expensive than they are in the United States or Hong Kong because of imports duties and value added taxes placed on them. Owners of real iPhone more often possess ones that have been smuggled in rather than purchased in China. BDA reported that in the first half of 2010, 800,000 real iPhones were sold compared to 2.5 million that were smuggled in.
Many fake cell phones are exported to the Middle East and Africa, where there is lot of money to be made selling cheap fakes as the real things. According to the BDA report, illicit phones makers were China’s biggest handset exporters.
