What the hell is an Internet Explorer icon doing in the "Dock" on that screenshot?

It's a cheap Chinese ripoff of the iPad. Even their product image is literally just a photoshopped picture of an iPad. What do you expect?

In my experience, you really only see Integer Explorer in China.

That being said, locally modified versions of Internet Explorer are extremely common. I can't remember their names off the top of my head, but even relatively unsophisticated users frequently download alternative versions of IE, which are generally based off of older IEs. (At least last time I was living there, which was about 16 months ago, so take this with a grain of salt)

Web designers / developers aren't focused on standards in the same way they are in the US/Europe, so other browsers may not display pages as expected. The Chinese Internet is quickly catching up with the rest of the world's in terms of quality, but it still lags behind.

Also, a significant chunk of the population primarily uses computers in Web Cafes rather than at home, so they don't even have the option of installing other browsers.

Perhaps you were thinking of Maxthon (http://www.maxthon.com/)?

I read somewhere that the IE icon is a symbol for web access in general in some parts of the world.

I know that in Korea, IE / Windows is basically the only choice, no one really registers the existence of anything else, so I presume it would be pretty similar in the rest of east Asia.

Korea is a special case; the government essentially mandated IE until very recently: http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monocultu...

I think that was done as a courtesy not to make North Korea's government look that bad in comparison.

Wouldn't this thing work great with IOS?