They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but there is no doubt, Steve Jobs won’t be pleased about this.
According to the New York Times several fake Apple stores are beginning to crop up internationally.
The fake stores look exactly like the real thing; everything from the product showcases to the glass walls and even the employees shirts and name tags are similar. The stores are even selling the official products, all without approval from Apple of course.
A recent post from a blogger named BirdAborad, written by an unidentified American woman living in China, has garnered tremendous views after she snapped some photos of one of the fake stores.
The writer said she was shocked to return to Kumming, China to notice not one but two Apple stores in her area.
“I went inside and poked around. They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store,” the blogger said in an e-mail with the Press. “It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shits with the clunky Apple name tags around their necks.”
She added: “When I went back to the store five days later and couldn’t find it, having overshot by two blocks, I seriously thought that it had simply been torn down and replaced with a bank in the mean time.”
But after noticing small details that were not similar to Apple’s traditional logos, she realized it was a fake. “This was a total Apple store ripoff,” she said. “A beautiful ripoff- a brilliant one- the best ripoff store we have ever seen (and we see them every day).”
The blogger said shortly after taking pictures inside the store she was escorted out by salespeople and security guards.
Apple has yet to comment on the fake stores but did release information today on their plans to update and release new Mac products including the MAC OS Lion.
On Tuesday, Apple released third quarter results which showed record sales for iPhones and iPads.
Recently Apple has been planning on offering the iPhone through China’s most popular cell phone carrier, China Mobile which currently has over 600 million customers according to The Wall Street Journal. The phone is currently only available through China’s second most popular carrier, China Unicorn.
