More Chinese Counterfeits

Coming hot on the heels of stories on the tPhone and unauthorized Harry Potter sequels comes an article in Popular Science about China's "cloning industry," framed around another iPhone clone, the miniOne. Interestingly, this article also touches on the idea that some of these "knockoffs" actually have features that rival the real thing:

The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. 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 miniOne's first news teases—a forum posting, a few spy shots, a product announcement that vanished after a day—generated a frenzy of interest online. Was it real? When would it go on sale? And most intriguing, could it really be even better than the iPhone?

The article talks about legitimate factories running "ghost shifts" in which they turn out bootlegs at night while it is supposed to be closed, as well as copycat factories based 100% on real ones. Even replica cars get made.

It makes me wonder if it all comes down to design. Did the tPhone look ridiculous just because the crude backwards Apple logo on the box and the copycat desktop photo? What if the manufacturers had come up with their own? Maybe that's next.

More on the tPhone

It ends up the made-in-China iPhone ripoff, the "tPhone," is made by a Beijing-based company called Qiao Xing Mobile Communications, a subsidiary of CEC Telecom. From their "mission statement":

In the era that information technology fulfilled with humanity, QXMC firmly believes: only when being national can be international. Based on the deeply insight of Chinese civilization and lifestyle, QXMC perfectly mixes the cutting-edge technology with Chinese people’s taste and preference through the forward looking strategic vision.

If I were them, I'd lay off the claim about "Chinese people's taste" if I were making rather tacky products like the tPhone, aka the CECT P168. See a comparison of the two cell phones at iTech News Net.

Or then again, maybe I am speaking too soon. At least one blogger has posted some reasons for preferring the CECT P168 tPhone over the iPhone. People are griping about the iPhone's battery, which cannot (easily) be replaced by the end user, while the tPhone's is replaceable and even comes with an extra. The CECT P168 also features two SIM card slots, which would be pretty cool if you have different plans with different providers or if you travel a lot. (I carry Chinese and Taiwanese SIM cards around--I assume a tPhone could hold both and I could switch when traveling.) And of course the tPhone is not locked to a specific carrier.

We don't have to mention the cost....

Presenting... the tPhone!

Who needs to wait another week or so for an iPhone when you can get a tPhone now!

Guess where it was made?