For every product out there in the marketplace, a similar product stands by its side jockeying for the same consumer dollars. Coke has its Pepsi, McDonald's has its Burger King and the United States has its Canada. Yes, good-natured competition is what makes our economy go 'round. But, in the world of consumer electronics, some companies fight dirty, plagiarizing the designs and ideas of direct competitors. In some cases, the copying is outright theft -- particularly in China, where American patent lawsuits are largely unsuccessful. For your entertainment pleasure, Switched presents this list of the 10 greatest copycat gadgets.
Meizu miniOneNo sooner than two weeks after Steve Jobs officially put the cell phone world on notice with the
unveiling of the iPhone did
this doppelganger on the left creep out of China. If the Meizu miniOne somehow slips past Apple's stable of lawyers, it's said to be on track to launch at the end of 2007 in China. It'll be stacked with a 720 x 480 display, a three-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS. And unlike the iPhone, the miniOne will run on ultra-fast 3G cellular data networks.
The phone's maker, Meizu -- guilty of
ripping off Apple designs in the past -- claims to have announced its own touchscreen super-phone days before the iPhone announcement. But as Engadget reported, the miniOne -- originally known as the M8 -- was
a very different looking phone at the time of the announcement, and was subsequently given a quick nip/tuck to transform it into this flagrant iPhone clone.
Spotted at
Engadget
