Houston Community News >> Chinese Cloners Copy iPhone
9/1/2007
Manhasset, NY (EETimes.com) — On taking their video camera inside the first
clone of the Apple iPhone, Semiconductor Insights' teardown specialists found it
to be an almost laughable takeoff of Apple's latest success story. However, its
analysts also noted that teardowns of subsequent clones indicate that
counterfeiters are capitalizing upon existing designs and more time to bring
their fakes up to a quality level that equals and will soon surpass that of not
only the iPhone, but all systems they're intent on faking.
Almost simultaneous with the iPhone's launch on June 29th., CEC Telecom in China launched the
Q130, the first clone. In preparation for a special session on counterfeiting at
the up-coming Embedded Systems Conference in Boston (Sept. 18"21), Semiconductor
Insights bought a Q130 in Shenzhen—for $350—and put it under the knife. From the
start, it was clear the device was not an iPhone. Not by any stretch of the
imagination.
"The logo was messed up," said Greg Quirk, marketing manager at SI. "The apple
was back to front, was pink and it had a stem." Beyond that, the display was
small, the MP3 player was poorly designed and there was no touchscreen, Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth or any of the highly functional software that made the original iPhone
stand out. "It has a 1.3 megapixel camera [though the iPhone isn't much better
at 2.0 megapixels] and the iTunes implementation was terrible," said Allan
Yogasingam, manager of strategic supply chain at SI. "They just took a basic GSM
phone and slapped on an Apple logo," said Quirk. Emphasizing the irony, he
pointed out that the only thing CECT got right on the device was the Apple
mantra, 'Think different' on the display on boot-up.
The first IC they saw was the single-chip GSM/GPRS baseband (SC6600D05) from
Spreadtrum, a Chinese baseband processor developer. It was the first time SI had
encountered a chip from that company, said Quirk. Next came the Samsung NOR
flash, was a 64-Mbit dual-bank memory, though SI had never seen that part number
before. "Also, the packaging markings [K5J6332] were not on Samsung's website
and didn't match the die markings [K8D6316]," added Quirk. The decapping process
that SI uses to expose die in their teardowns will also be demonstrated at ESC.
Going further, the team uncovered a ViMicro VC0568 camera controller chip that
offloads image processing from the phone's CPU. "ViMicro is also Chinese, so at
least it can be said that counterfeiters like to support their local
semiconductor industries," said Yogasingam.
On the front end, NXP dominates with parts that were once Silicon Labs' before
NXP bought its cellular communications business. Parts included the Si4300
monolithic CMOS GSM power amplifier and Si4210 Aero II GSM/GPRS transceiver.
Highly integrated, that device was designed to reduce parts count and enable
more compact phones, said Quirk.
Counterfeits surpassing originals
While the Q130 was clearly a rip-off, subsequent counterfeits have become much
more sophisticated and SI predicts will soon surpass the original.
"Counterfeiting will always be a problem," said Yogasingam. "China is going
through an extraordinary economic boom. Items will 'slip' off assembly lines and
into the hands of counterfeiters." According to Quirk, those counterfeits are
getting better and better with more time. "Plus, they have the devices to copy
and are incorporating more aesthetics," said Yogasingam.
For example CECT has improved greatly upon its original knock-off with the CECT
P168 and Yogasingam pointed to the Meizu M8, also called the miniOne that was
recently featured on the most recent cover of Popular Science. For some fans of
Meizu, the miniOne is already better than the iPhone—and at a lower cost.
At the up-coming Embedded Systems Conference, SI's presentation, 'Increased
sophistication of counterfeiting: iFakes to iPhones', will address the increased
prevalence and sophistication of counterfeiting in the electronics industry.
Incorporating a Live Teardown format the presenters will look at different fake
iPhones sourced in China, including some from CECT. "Pirates are making a living
copying the protected work of others and are getting better at it," said Quirk.
At the event, SI will also address counterfeit components in real products
including some tips on how to spot fake components in the supply chain.
Contributed by Patrick Mannion TechOnline