Almost every piece of hardware is clonable in China (see ipods)
The big difference between the original and the clone ends up being the software, with the clone having the crappiest possible software.
Then what if your software could legally be cloned ? as in OSS ?
There comes the H9 UMPC which runs Linux and is an obvious clone of the Nokia 770 (known for running a special Linux version called Maemo)
Could this prove to be a cheap alternative ?