Apple Watch knock-offs hit China stores

“Most people who buy them will do so knowing they are not Apple’s real Watch,” Matthew Forney, president of the business consultancy Fathom China, told the BBC.

“Apple products are very popular in China, and it’s possible that Chinese consumers will want to be seen to be the first person on their block to wear its Watch. However, I think most of those consumers are aware that there has been an issue with fakes and copycats on Taobao and would be highly suspicious of the devices.”

Others are worried about the damage such businesses do to brands in general.

“These guys are specialists,” Laurent Le Pan, founder and CEO of the Omate smartwatch maker told CNN Money.

“The speed at which they can bring copies on the market is amazing. The hardware is not the big challenge – the hard part is on the software and the application side. In the end, you sometimes need to be an expert to tell the difference between real and fake.”

For now, Apple might own the Watch space with the perception it is the first to market – other brands have already released smart watches of their own, but to date few if any connect to smartphones, their features largely limited to exercise measuring and physical fitness monitoring. But that won’t hold for too long, with Apple’s second wave of competition coming from established genuine brands rather than the armada of copycats.

Swatch, the world’s largest watchmaker, plans to launch a smart watch to undercut Apple and other legitimate rivals featuring Near Field Communication (NFC) chips later this year, which will allow payments by watch, among other features.

Rival manufacturers will have to be compatible with iOs or Android, so most will focus on Android given the likely barriers Apple will place on sanctioning direct competitors on its own OS.