Asian Orchards

Copying Apple computers

The industrious copycats of Asia have long churned out counterfeit or cut-rate versions of name-brand Western products, including Levi's jeans, Samsonite luggage, Johnnie Walker Scotch, Rolex watches and even Rubik's Cube. Now the me-too factories of the Pacific rim have a new target: the popular Apple personal computer.

At shops in Taiwan and Hong Kong, knock-offs of the bestselling Apple II Plus model are available for prices ranging down to $325, as compared with $1,530 for the genuine article in the U.S. A few of the bogus machines bear Apple Computer Inc.'s distinctive trademark, a multicolored apple with a bite missing. Others have slightly changed names like Apolo. Asian manufacturers have so successfully duplicated the silicon micro chips in the core of the Apple machines that the imitations can use a broad range of software, from VisiCalc, the top-selling business budgeting and planning program, to video games like Snack Attack and Rocket Intercept.

Apple's new competitors have already captured more than half of the firm's East Asian market, and they are beginning to export their computers to South Africa and South America. One Taiwanese company is reportedly producing 3,000 imitation Apples a month. Apple's disgruntled Asian dealers have warned executives at the company's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters that the U.S. may be the next stop for the bogus computers.

Nonetheless, Apple's management has remained curiously unperturbed. Says Jeremy Lack, general manager of Apple's East Asian distributor: "The executives in California have underestimated the enemy, and if they don't quickly do something about it, they're going to find cheap copies of the Apple being sold on every corner in the U.S." Apple's general counsel, Albert Eisenstat, toured East Asia two months ago to assess the problem. He concluded that the Asian challenge was not yet serious enough to warrant immediate legal action, but Apple is still considering that option. Says Eisenstat: "In the end, Apple's continuing new technology is going to make these fake machines obsolete."

In a press release, the company dismissed its Asian competitors as "essentially garage-type operations." That confident statement was rich in irony because the very first Apple computers were built in the garage at the home of one of the company's founders, Steven Jobs.

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