Cloned In China

About two months ago when China Unicom started to sell Apple’s iPhone in China, There’re reports said the sales of iPhone in China might meet legal troubles. The reason was that Chinese manufacturer Hanwang Technology had applied ‘i-phone’ trademark for phones in 2004. Since then the ‘i-phone’ trademark has been using on Hanwang’s telephone sets. The similarity between ‘i-phone’ and ‘iphone’ makes it might be illegal for Apple to sell iPhone in China. Right Now, It seems that Apple has solved this problem completely. The data from the official website of China Trademark Office shows that Hanwang has transfered the ‘i-phone’ trademark to Apple company. These two company both refused to give any details about this trademark deal.

Hanwang's i-phone

The trademark problem has been resolved, but Apple’s China partner China Unicom seems to still have big problems with iPhone. Last month China Unicom said they had sold 100,000 iPhones in China so far. The the situation is really not optimistic. China Unicom started to sell iPhone in late October last year, but the China Unicom version iPhone, Which is referred by some users in China as ‘ the castrated iPhone’, seems to be not attractive enough to the users, due to the lacking of Wi-Fi. Many users seeked to buy other iPhone versions that’s launched out of China from obscure channels.

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