The success of Apple's iPad is not just drawing more competition to the tablet market. It's attracting thousands of counterfeit and knock-off products, too.
On a single day in July, almost 18,000 fakes and clones resembling the iPad and Android devices were available for sale on 23 ecommerce sites, according to MarkMonitor, a San Francisco firm that helps companies protect their brands.
The tablets can be illegal - for instance, if they have a bogus Apple logo - and often they do not work well and have no warranty protection, said Fred Felman, the chief marketing officer of MarkMonitor. The copycat products and suspected counterfeits found in MarkMonitor's survey were offered by more than 5,000 vendors, many of them in China.
Knock-off iPads may proliferate during the year-end holiday season, as shoppers beset by the economic slump go hunting for bargains.
That is creating more competition for Apple, even if many consumers buy the tablets only because they believe they are getting the real thing. Apple's advantage is that its software is hard to replicate, said Francis Sideco, an analyst at IHS, the research firm.
"You can only copy to a certain degree," he said. Knock-off tablets may not connect to Apple's iTunes and App Store, among other things.
"It's not necessarily about hardware but the software, and it's very difficult to copy that," Mr Sideco said.
Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment.
Apple released the iPad in April last year, and it quickly emerged as the company's number two product category behind the iPhone. In the past quarter, the tablet generated US$6.9 billion (Dh23.34bn) for Apple, out of a total of $28.3bn.
Counterfeiters are increasingly focusing on mobile technology after years of copying pharmaceuticals, handbags, software and other products.
* Bloomberg News
