Fake Apple stores
By Techgirl

There was a time when China had a reputation for reverse engineering Phones, TVs, music systems and other gadgets and producing similar products at much cheaper prices.

These days the Communist giant with ‘capitalist’ characteristics has invited Infosys and TCS to set up shop in China so they can move up the food chain and also supply high level BPO and IT Services.

American blogger Birdabroad is a Health Specialist working in China who stumbled on an Apple Store in that country which is totally fake.  It looks like the real Apple store in USA and but there are subtle differences.  Birdabroad has blogged and has many pictures of the fake Apple store (one of which is above)

“
A beautiful ripoff – a brilliant one – the best ripoff store we had ever seen (and we see them every day). 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 it’s signs – it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit.

The name tags around the necks of the friendly salespeople didn’t actually have names on them – just an Apple logo and the anonymous designation “Staff”. And of course, Apple’s own website will tell you that they only have a few stores in Beijing and Shanghai, opened only recently; Apple famously opens new stores painstakingly, presumably to assure impeccable standards and lots of customer demand.
“

How soon before we see fake Infosys and TCS offices in China?

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog techgirltalk.blogspot.com.  Techgirl has been ejected from Twitter for satirizing an Indian Minister.  Her satire blog has links to her Times of India interview detailing her being kicked out of Twitter, and then being invited back.