Mobile Phone News:

I read an interesting article recently, in Popular Science, called “China’s iClone”. It’s about the proliferation of Chinese clones of popular mobile phones, and it got me thinking, because frankly, it’s a really good article.

When you think about it, it’s amazing what China’s cloners will copy. Cars, electronics, phones. Reading that article jogged my memory of a time when Chinese cloners damn near cloned the entirety of the massive electronics company, NEC. (They really did, they set up factories, cloned their business cards, everything. Hey, if you’re going to stalk something, may as well be a big multinational)

After a quick poll in the office, everyone’s phone is Made in China, including Chewie’s iPhone, my P1i and I suspect John’s N95, even though he wouldn’t let us take the back off his…

So, China already makes pretty much any phone you’d care to name. Given that, it’s no wonder that Chinese clones pop up so often.

Take for example, the N95. The Chinese released a version without the slide, that was admittedly bigger, but it was absolutely clear what it was based on. It was the E-PDA V16, pictured below.

And then we have the copy of my Sony Ericsson P1i, with its imaginative name, the Gold Star P1i, again pictured below.

And then, of course, there’s one phone that’s really sent the cloners into a frenzy, with not 1, not 2, but 3 copies of it… That’s right, it’s the iPhone:

What’s really, really interesting, though, as the article points out, is that a similar thing happened with Japan and Korea. Japan, in the 70’s, went from rip-off merchants to the big name in super-high-tech cool stuff (Sony and Nintendo, anyone?). Same with Korea in the 80’s, going from not much at all, into another electronics superpower (I only need mention 2 names: Samsung & LG)

China is doing the same trick now, but much, much faster. Their products are becoming respectable, and they’ve seemingly stopped wanting to merely clone but to also innovate. Which is why I’m going to make a prediction here.

We are going to see a lot more handset makers become big names in the next few years, and lots of new super powerful mobile phones, more advanced than anything we’ve dreamed of, awesomely well-built, and really, really cool.

And they’ll all be Chinese. As soon as the cloners lose their complete disregard for international copyright law (and personally, I can’t wait to see them trying to stop people cloning their phones!), the mainstream, and even bigger money, awaits!