Here are your daily Apple news items and rumors for Thursday:
Chinese Knockoffs: Apple is big in China. The country accounted for nearly $4 billion of Apple‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL) total second-quarter revenue – Apple made just $630 million in the country during the same period in 2010. As popular as the iPhone and iPad are in Beijing, Apple’s success there might be short-lived. A Wednesday report at CBS News suggested Apple might suffer the same fate technology companies like Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) have suffered in the country – namely that revenue will diminish as the company’s products increase in popularity because of piracy and knockoff products. Up to now, anecdotal evidence and the company’s earnings have shown that Chinese citizens are buying legitimate Apple products. A post from blog Bird Abroad highlighted in CBS‘ report points to the opening of a full knockoff Apple Store selling bootleg products in Kunming as evidence that piracy is going to become an increasingly large hurdle for Apple to clear.
iPad, Not Android, For Business: A Thursday report at All Things Digital detailed a recent study conducted by Good Technology, a mobile device manager working with almost half of the companies the Fortune 500 list. Good Technology found that, over the course of the second quarter, 27% of the mobile devices activated by companies were tablets. Of course, it would be more accurate to say that they were activating iPads. More than 95% of the tablets activated by Good Technology’s clients were made by Apple. Bad news for Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and its hardware partners like Motorola (NYSE:MMI). There’s worse news for them, though: Android tablet activations actually decreased during the period, falling 3% from levels seen in the first few months of 2011. Although things look dire now, Good Technology does think Android tablet adoption will pick up in 2012, with growth rates mimicking that of Android smartphones between 2008 and 2010.
Apple e-Reader: Just when Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) thought everything was going to be okay for the Kindle and Nook, it looks like Apple might yet beat them at their own game. A Thursday report at Apple Insider detailed an Apple patent titled “Motion Controllable Dual Display Portable Media Device.” The patent shows a book-shaped device with two e-ink displays arranged side by side. The device would include a motion sensor to determine when a user turned a virtual page.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
