Apple Watch is a current hot topic in the tech world with everyone talking about the watch's features, battery and most importantly, the price. The Cupertino tech giant made quite a splash when it revealed the Apple Watch's price -- $349 for the base model and $17,000 for the high-end timepiece.
But if you are skeptical about purchasing the watch due to its high price and live in China, you have multiple options. Clones of Apple Watch have started popping up on Alibaba's Taobao site in China and they look exactly like the original and come for dirt cheap prices.
Several Apple Watch lookalikes have been listed on the popular shopping site in China and are found to be a huge hit among shoppers. The original Apple Watch is slated for a later release in China on April 24, giving an opportunity for the makers of knock-off devices to sell their lookalikes to interested buyers.
The products listed on Taobao don a strikingly similar look like the original Apple Watch but they have clearly been labeled as copies. As for the price, some are offering the smartwatches for about 250 yuan, which translates to roughly about $40, which is merely a fraction of Apple's original pricing for its watch, BBC noted.
There is a specific model with AW08 name, which is up for just 368 yuan, roughly about $60. It has an identical interface with a cluster of apps on the home screen and features the digital crown and a button on the right side of the watch. The AW08 is said to run up to 120 hours and works both with Android and iOS smartphones.
Apple Watch is expected to launch its smartwatch in China for 2,588 yuan and the pre-orders will begin starting April 10.
Apple did not comment on the population of fake Apple Watches in China ahead of its official launch but a former Apple intellectual property lawyer told BBC that blocking sale of such copies will require a lot of time and money.
""There's a legal concept called unfair competition that is recognised around the globe, but in China you can't get a preliminary temporary restraining order for it -- you have to go through the law as a slog, and that takes time," Joe Simone, director of Simone IP Services, said.
"For Apple, it's like going after a room full of mice -- there are just too many of them and even if you clear the room today they'll be back tomorrow," he added.
