Chinese Pirates Copy iPhone, Make Improvements

An anonymous reader writes "Popular Science notes that manufacturers in China duplicate many well-know products. This includes the Apple iPhone, imitations of which are rolling off the assembly line already. That might actually be a good thing for some users, who might enjoy the user experience of China's own miniOne. 'It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers.' The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. 'The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.)' Using the iPhone as an example, the PopSci site walks through the process of making imitation technology."

Comments

Chinese Fakes

[apodyopsis]

I spent alot of time in China working in the CE industry and this does not suprise me at all. The local culture is that to copy and improve is natural and not illegal.

However that had not stopped Chinese firms using our own IP systems against us by patenting just about everything they can get their hands on and then seeking money via the courts.

In a very real sense, they are having their cake and eating it as well.

My favorite story was the fake NEC firm and thats also mentioned in TFA :"In 2006, NEC, one of the 25 biggest consumer-electronics firms in the world, went public with the results of a two-year investigation. The company had been receiving complants about products it didn't even make: DVD players, cellphones, MP3 players. Investigators from International Risk, a private security firm employed by NEC, ultimately uncovered a shadow version of the company operating out of corporate offices in China, with ties to more than 50 manufacturing facilities. "On the surface, it looked like a series of intellectual-property infringements, but in reality a highly organized group has attempted to hijack the entire brand," says Steve Vickers, the former Hong Kong police inspector who was in charge of the investigation for International Risk. Executives had their own NEC business cards and e-mail add-resses. They had marketing plans and distribution networks in place. Some "company" facilities even had electronic signs bearing huge, lighted NEC logos. Most bold of all, the bogus NEC actually charged the manufacturers it worked with royalties on its designs. The investigation led to raids last year on 18 of the manufacturing sites and the seizure of nearly 50,000 fake products. Yet the factories themselves are still operating, just not using the NEC name. The ringleaders of the scam have yet to be caught; like the Samsung copiers, they are thought to still be making fakes."

I suspect the biggest problem was trying to persuade them that they had been breaking the law in the first place.

For more information on Chinese patents see..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6939 767.stm

For more information on the fake NEC firm, see
http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/slick-pirates-s eize-entire-brand/2006/05/29/1148754904830.html

To see some fake chinese brands..
http://www.hemmy.net/2007/04/29/chinese-fake-brand s/

Re:Cool!

[king-manic]

Socialism killed millions of people and impoverished billions. Regulation is a violent intervention in peaceful trade, it's legitimate to oppose it, with force if necessary.

Communism != socialism. Sweden, denmark, Canada etc.. are socialists. USSR, China and Cuba are Communist. Stop it with the confused drivel.