Recently, a consumer in mainland China purchased an iPad Air 7 on an e-commerce platform and upon receiving the product, discovered that the casing of the product manual was imprinted with “Designed by Aqqle in California,” which does not match the English name of Apple Inc., sparking attention.
According to a report by the “Yangzi Evening News” on May 22, Ms. Chen, the consumer, recently bought an iPad Air 7 from a digital store on a certain e-commerce platform. She stated that due to her trust in the platform and the ongoing promotional activities at the time, she searched for “iPad Air 7” and placed an order with the top-ranked store on the result page. She purchased the 1TB capacity iPad Air 7 labeled as the “official standard configuration” for approximately 4300 yuan.
Upon unpacking the delivery, Ms. Chen found that the casing of the product manual had the inscription “Designed by Aqqle in California,” which was not consistent with “Apple.”
Subsequently, Ms. Chen contacted the merchant for inquiries. The merchant claimed that the device was brand new, flawless, unused, and supported machine verification on the official website. However, regarding the misspelling of “Aqqle” on the manual casing, the merchant did not respond directly. Ms. Chen stated that she was particularly concerned about this error and has since completed the return and refund process.
A journalist from mainland China contacted the customer service of the store in question posing as a consumer. The customer service personnel mentioned that the devices marked as “official standard configuration” in the store were brand new, flawless, unused authentic products, with the serial number activated but the system not yet set up. However, the packaging box was not original but an aftermarket one, leading to discrepancies from the original packaging.
The news sparked skepticism among mainland Chinese netizens. Some netizens commented, “Isn’t this a fake product?” “They actually claimed it’s authentic?” “This is clearly an imitation of ‘Apple’.”