The most notorious iPhone knock-off at all is the Meizu M8, a cheeky doppelganger that looks virtually identical to the iPhone before you dive below the surface into the excremental ocean of its software: a custom-shelled version of Microsoft Windows CE 6. Meizu CEO Jack Wong has been cheekily shining Apple on about the Meizu M8’s more-than-subtle likeness to the iPhone for a while now, having laughed as recently as last month that the new iPod Touch looks just like their upcoming Meizu M9II Android smartphone.
Wong’s probably wishing he’d kept his mouth shut now. According to Wong, Meizu is now being forced by Cupertino’s lawyers to stop selling the M8… and it might be enough to put the company under.
Citing negotiations that apparently went sour, Apple has apparently gone straight to the Intellectual Property Office and demanded a sales and production freeze of the Meizu M8 smartphone based on its uncanny similarity to the appearance of the iPhone. According to Wong, this could be devastating to the company as it prepares to launch its M9 Android smartphone, a refreshingly non-infringing phone:
. I can cope with a production freeze, but not with having our shops closed and thus not being able to use up our inventory. If Apple and the provincial IPO take another insatiable step, I can only go head to head against them.
Good luck with that, buddy. We all love to root for the little guy, and we’d be lying if we didn’t say we hadn’t garnered some impish entertainment for the utter shamelessness of Meizu’s iPhone-like, but this has always been a pretty open-and-shut case of infringement. The M8 looks like it does to confuse people who want an iPhone into buying it, end of story. Wong should have never tried to launch a legitimate smartphone business on the back of a product so obviously legally vulnerable.
[via Engadget]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
17 responses to “Apple Forcing iPhone Clone Maker Meizu To Shutter Production and End Sales”
Why not upload a picture of an actual M8 for this article, rather than just an iPhone 4? It does look similar to older iPhones, but no more than most of the other players in this market do. Living in Shenzhen, I used one for 6 months until it was stolen and wish I could get my hands on another one, for several reasons. First, it was priced far more reasonably than iPhone 4, and second, it had some advantages over iPhones, such as locally-oriented apps and features, and ease of Chinese-language input (which is somewhat cumbersome on iPhones, probably as a result of Apple showing little interest in altering its product to suit the diverse needs of markets outside the US). Unfortunately, Apple have ensured that I don’t have that choice, which means my dollars will go to HTC, Motorola or another international iPhone competitor, rather than little old Meizu. Not sure if this is good or bad news for Apple.
Cheers
If Iphone will only be reasonable with the price as the economy is really soaring maybe I will consider to buy the original but for the price of clone and lots of application and functionality such as TV analog add on and dual sim not to mention the price. I will definitely consider the clone, anyways Iphone original is also made in China so whats the difference, I will go cheaper clone iphone. just a thought if you don’t want your product to be cloned and pirated don’t consider to manufacture it in China as your product will sell like hotcake on the street.
CHINA SUPPORTS CONSUMERS AFFORDABILITY FAR MORE BETTER THAN MONEY HUNGER BUSINESS CORPORATION, DO NOT MANUFACTURE YOUR PRODUCT TO CHINA IF YOU DON’T WANT IT TO BE PIRATED AND CLONED SIMPLE AS THAT!