Apple's "biggest fan" is at it again with a MacBook Air lookalike

An Apple MacBook Air lookalike seems to be the latest in a consistent stream of Apple knock-offs manufactured by Xiaomi, a Chinese company making continuous headlines for copying Apple designs, and re-branding them with its own logo.

The ultralight laptop is almost identical to the MacBook Air, and although a Xiaomi spokesperson has denied that the concept belongs to Xiaomi, citing another local competitor, the Chinese manufacturer has plans to release a laptop in the first quarter of 2016, possibly running Microsoft Windows, or a modified version of Chrome OS, at least according to Bloomberg.

Xiaomi has, not only, gained ground in China’s smartphone market, against both Apple and Samsung, but has risen to be the number one smartphone manufacturer in China, as of the second quarter of 2014, by blatantly cloning Apple Inc. in nearly every aspect, to a point of near-derision, when, during a keynote address, the company’s CEO Lei Jun arrived on stage, dressed in a similar fashion as the late Steve Jobs, and addressing the audience with a keynote slide featuring Steve Jobs tagline “One more thing...”.

To add salt to Apple’s wounds, is the fact that as long as Xiaomi does not expand to Europe or the US, it is still very much a Chinese company operating within its own territory, with rules that differ greatly from other markets, and any legal action on Apple’s part could create a backlash capable of damaging Apple’s footprint in the Chinese smartphone market. Aside from public backlash, China has always been a very tough territory in which major players like HTC and even Samsung have tried their luck in taking legal action against companies believed to be in breach of a number of patents.