When the hottest electronics gadget in years meets the world's biggest producer of counterfeit goods, it just seemed inevitable that fake iPhones would spawn.

What's surprising is that some unauthorized iPhones sold in electronics markets in China's biggest cities, according to a Chinese news story, are actually more than double the price. It's not clear to me whether the iPhones in question are real or copies. The phones are manufactured for Apple by Hon Hai Precision Industry in Shenzhen, one of the cities where shoppers can find the unauthorized gadget for sale.

The fact that at least some people in China are willing to shell out $1,170 for this device speaks to the nature of the world's largest mobile phone market. Here's a good photo comparing a real iPhone with a Chinese version on the right.

While Chinese consumers seem unwilling to pay much for software, they're obsessive over the latest hardware. To keep trend-conscious users interested, new versions of mobile phones are released every six months, a much shorter time frame than they're updated here.

By the time Apple releases its iPhone in China in 2008, perhaps the country's more advanced mobile phone users will have moved on to the next craze.