iPhones Produced in China Smuggled Right Back in

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Factories in China produce iPhones that are exported to the United States and Europe and then smuggled right back in helping explain why Apple says it sold about 3.7 million iPhones last year while only 2.3 million are actually registered in the United States and Europe. For Apple, the booming overseas market for iPhones is a sign of its marketing prowess but also a blow to Apple's business model, costing the company as much as $1 billion over the next three years, according to some analysts. Since negotiations between Apple and China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile-phone service operator with more than 350 million subscribers, broke down last month, the official release of the iPhone in China has been stalled producing a thriving gray market. Copycat models are another possible threat to Apple in China. Not long after the iPhone was released, research and development teams in China were taking it apart, trying to copy or steal the design and software for use in iPhone knockoffs, or iClones and some people who have used the clones say they are sophisticated and have many functions that mimic the iPhone. "A lot of people here want to get an iPhone," says Shanghai lawyer Conlyn Chan."

Comments

Re:Remember

[rickb928]

Arguing with an AC is always fraught with risk, but hey, this is /. so...

You seem to be arguing that intellectual property 'isn't, as in 'isn't property'. That would so cleverly explain why this thing, which 'isn't property', is so coveted as to be copied and produced.

Or perhaps you are arguing that one should not be protected against others' copying their efforts and profiting from them.

Or perhaps, instead, you are arguing some other point you didn't make. 'Cause I don't think you've made either or your points. Wait, actually, you just spewed. No real explanation or logic, just a pair of statements.

Ok. But intellectual property is real to those who create and develop it. And copying someone's work is pretty much considered wrong if it's *yours*, believe me. Imagine writing a stellar term paper, and lending it out to someone. Not even to copy, since plagiarism os so easy to detect, but to let them touch it up a bit and benefit from your original work. Now imagine they post it out there and sell it for a few bucks a whack. Do you share in the revenue? And if not, is that perhaps the least bit unfair to you? Oh, yes, you can choose to give it away. But what if you didn't choose, 'cause you didn't know it was being distributed...

Actually, bad analogy. You sound like the sort of AC that would take the contrary position just to annoy me. Feh...