Apple's iPads Harder to Find in China

HONG KONG, Feb. 18, 2012 -- Apple's wildly popular iPads are becoming a little harder to find in mainland China, one of its fastest growing markets.

This week, Amazon.com stopped selling the tablet computers online in China at Apple's request, according to sources close to the matter, who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Amazon, which was selling the iPad through resellers, is not an authorized reseller, the sources said.

The tablet computers are also no longer available on the website of Chinese retailer Gome or Jingdong's 360buy.com. And government officials have seized dozens of the devices off retail shelves on the mainland amid a contentious trademark battle Apple is facing over the iPad name, China's state-run media reports.

Shenzhen Proview Technology, a unit of Hong Kong-based LCD screen maker Proview International Holdings, alleges it owns the iPad trademark in mainland China and has asked a Shanghai court for a temporary restraining order to stop Apple's sales of devices under this name.

Proview has also asked mainland officials to ban Apple's import and export of the iPad, according to Roger Xie, a Shenzhen-based attorney representing Proview. Proview International's shares have been halted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2010. Its Taiwanese founder, Yang Long-san, resigned as chief executive of the parent company the same year, after filing for bankruptcy, but remains chairman of Shenzhen Proview.

Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu says the Cupertino, Calif., consumer electronics company bought the worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries, including China, years ago, but Proview refuses to honor the agreement.

If sales of Apple's iPads are banned in China, the company could lose at least $1.4 billion in annual sales, estimates Jean-Louis Lafayeedney, a Hong Kong-based technology hardware analyst at Ji Asia, an Asian equity research firm.

Amazon.com's move to pull the products from its Chinese website is not related to Apple's ongoing trademark dispute, according to the sources close to the matter. Amazon.com did not immediately return calls requesting comment.

It's unclear whether, and to what extent, the removal of the iPad from a few retail outlets in China will affect the device's overall sales on the mainland. Apple's iPad is still sold through its online store in China, as well as through authorized resellers.

While Apple doesn't disclose how many iPads it sells in China, 15.4 million of these devices were sold globally in the fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 31, more than double the sales of the year-ago quarter. For fiscal 2011, Apple's revenue from the Greater China region totaled $13 billion, a more than four-fold increase from the prior year.

"My sense so far is that this (trademark dispute) is not something that will affect the Apple brand," says Torsten Stocker, a Hong Kong-based partner at Monitor Group, a management consulting firm. "But you could argue that if there are constant disputes, it could affect the brand."

At a Gome electronics store in Beijing, Zhang Junqi, 30, said the lawsuits won't deter him from buying an iPad.

"Trademark is an important thing, but for customers, quality is the key," says Zhang.

Contributing: Sunny Yang