There is a prejudice about the Chinese, that they will fake nearly anything.


I will start with a non-tech story a friend of mine from Shanghai told me: a colleague of his bought a Audi A6 in China for a really good price – a “lucky punch”, a bargain.  This made him happy.  A view months later there was a problem with the motor, and as the guy isn’t a great mechanic he took the car to the nearest Audi garage.  A day later the garage rang him up and asked him where he bought the car.  He told them he bought it in Shanghai, but not from an official Audi dealer.  The garage employee responded: “Hm… , well, OK, that maybe explains something, because actually your car is not a real Audi….”   Hard to believe?
I thought this was really priceless, that even German cars are now being faked (‘knocked off‘) in China.

Coming to another kind of fake:  five years ago I have been to one of the official tourist knock off markets in China that specialized in garments, handbags and watches.  I’ve since been told that this market was closed down due to the pressure from all the luxury brands on the Chinese (by the way, I have never seen a bigger Louis Vuitton store than in Shanghai) – so I really thought that the times of these markets were over.  Well, as it always happens in China: if something closes, it remains for this for some weeks and then it pops up in another side of the city…  and now, voilà, it’s not only cloths, shoes, and handbags – the new thing is, they even fake electronics nowadays.  Clearly, the iPhone is the #1 knock off you see everywhere.  And they even have a faked the software on it, the icons look pretty similar and it works more or less.   But if that’s  not enough, all forms of iPods of course, iPads (yes, 1 and 2) and Blackberry knock-offs are available too.   Sure, you’ll see all of our iconic Asian status symbols there!

But see yourself on the pictures (sorry I forgot to take one of the iPhone display showing the operating system).

It’s frustrating being a part-time blogger.

It happens again and again – I get interested in a bit of news, I think to myself “I should write something on that”, I make a few notes, and I plan to get back to it in a day or two when I’m less busy.  Meanwhile, though, the story continues to evolve, and one of two things happen:

• What I intended to write actually pans out (in which case  my remarkably insightful observations come off reading more like “I knew that would happen…” than the pearls of digitalmissive wisdom they could have been)

…or…

• What I intended to write turns out to be exactly wrong (in which case I guess I’m lucky to have not gotten around to writing anything in the first place).

Such is the case with the iPad.

We first reported on the device over a year ago (here) – but since the device has become a reality, we haven’t had the the time to keep up (other than to make a quick observation on how the launch-day twitterati predicted how short-lived the immediate bump in Apple’s stock price would be here).

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Ground control to Major Tom – it’s now official, Planet Earth has found a new religion.

First the iPod. Then the iPod Touch. Next, the iPhone. And now, voila, in comes the iPad! At least throughout the Western hemisphere, the iGospel seems to have taken solid hold.

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…maybe not.   But we’re going to write one anyway – because we feel there are still at least two interesting things left to say about the new Apple device unveiled last Wednesday:

Point #1. Technically, the new Apple new iPad device was disappointing on several levels (still no Flash support, still no multitasking, still no video partnerships, still no AT&T alternative).  But while the storm of negative Twitter reaction had already begun while while Steve Jobs was still on the stage, it was not until the next day that the negative reaction was reflected in the stock price.  Take a look at the chart to your left – the iPad event started at 2:00 Eastern Standard Time and was accompanied by a clear immediate spike in Apple’s share price, due as much to the sheer momentum of pre-event buzz as to superficial (“isn’t Apple the coolest?”) mainstream media coverage of the event itself.  Despite an army of bloggers and tweeters continuing to bash the iPad for its disappointing feature set throughout the day, the price remained elevated – in fact, it was not until the market open on the next day (Thursday January 28th) that the stock suddenly pulled back, ending up lower than it was pre-announcement (armed with knowledge of the twitter traffic, shorting Apple at about 4:00 that afternoon would have been a good move for for short-term traders).

To me, this lag time between the (misguided) initial spike and the next day’s eventual retreat represents the disconnect that still exists between the technorati and investor classes.  That there was such a disconnect even in this case was surprising, though – because Twitter coverage of the event was fueled by an unprecedented number of tech websites serving live video streams of the event (surely a record for a product launch).   When it comes to high profile corporate events and/or panel discussions, the immediacy and global reach of live streaming internet video combined with social media platforms such as Twitter form a powerful and mutually-reinforcing mechanism to amplify and increase the penetration of any breaking news – yet still, it took a day for the initial widespread disappointment in the iPad’s feature set to register in Apple’s share price.

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