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

Closed source = Not interested

[UbuntuLinux]

Once again we have an example of a product with potential, but completely hobbled and crippled by using it to run closed source, proprietary software. In this case, it is Apple's OS X operating system. While OS X is mildly more functional then Windows, it is still closed source, and therefore inherently inferior to a product running an Open Source operating system, such as Ubuntu.

Apple's software is generally slightly better then Microsoft's (although still inferior to Linux, from which most of the codebase is stolen) and as it uses a BSD based kernel (which is in turn based on Linux) it is *impossible* for the iPhone to become infected with malware. But, Apple's lock-in effect is much more powerful; for example, iPhones can only phone other iPhones, or you have reduced call quality. And like all closed source, proprietary software, it is riddled with security issues. For example, several Linux hackers have found out how to hack other people's iPhones just by ringing them up and whistling into their handsets.

So, what if this device used Open Source software? It would be more powerful, more secure, and more efficient. Users would be able to inspect the source and add teh features they wanted, and audit the code for security concerns. Another win for open source.

Re:Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a list of chinese "innovations" ? Here are 5 spaces...
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