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Originally Posted by HarryT
According to Amazon, the Kindle is not sold in China. Are you sure that these weren't a local copy? That sounds a lot more likely than a genuine Kindle that supports ePub.
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Metro City is flooded with knock-offs; I bought a fake iPhone there last year. However, two things suggest to me that we're dealing with the genuine article here. First, the vendors are generally quite up front about their fakes; many customers in fact go there specifically looking for them. However, in this case, the vendors assured me it was genuine.
Second, it was priced well above US levels (1500rmb=$US220), which is consistent with pricing on product out of the US. iPads, for example, run about 30% more here than stateside. Conversely the whole point of the knock-off industry is to
undercut the genuine article. E.g., my fake iPhone cost me about 40% of the price on the real deal (900rmb vs. 2000 for the genuine iPhone two booths over). Further, my knock-off iPhone lacked a number of features from the real-deal product; once again, the vendor was quite open and honest about it.
That being said, being the genuine article doesn't guarantee it's authorized. Grey market is also exceedingly common. I bought a Wii console at Metro City about a year ago; it came fully loaded with all the latest hacks -- everything from Homebrew Channel to the USB Loader -- of necessity, it being impossible to find a legal copy of any Wii game here (like movies and software, Wii games can be had on any street corner for a buck and change per disc). While I've no doubt the console itself is genuine, whether the vendor was an authorized dealer is difficult to say -- he claims he is, but I'm pretty sure the preinstallation of Wii hacks was unauthorized.
That being said, on the assumption we
are dealing with a grey market product, should Amazon ever attempt to legitimately enter the Chinese market, like Microsoft it may find itself in an uphill battle against its own product. From what I could see, the K3s at Metro City lacked nothing from the K3 at Amazon.com, and added value, in terms of jail-breaking and additional format support at the least.
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Do you have any pictures? I wanna see it!
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Unfortunately, no. Metro City vendors tend to get all bristly at customers trying to photograph their product. However, visually it is indistinguishable to my eye from the K3 photos over at Amazon.com.
--Nathanael