“Next month will see the launch of a handset which outperforms the iPhone, at £200, from a man who admits he’s been waiting for Steve Jobs to die,” Bill Ray reports for The Register.
“That man is Lie Jun, and the phone is the much-anticipated Xiaomi handset. The release date is 18 December,” Ray reports. “Xiaomi is an Android-based handset with a dual-core processor, and sold 300,000 pre-orders in 34 hours thanks to an (unsubsidised) price of only £200, and a man who openly aped the head of Apple and even predicted his own success would come out of Steve Jobs’ demise.”
Ray reports, “‘[Steve] Jobs will die someday, so there are still opportunities for us. The meaning of our existence is just waiting for him to kick the bucket,’ he told Entrepreneur magazine a scant two months before Steve did indeed kick the aforementioned bucket.”
Read more in the full article here.
Yeah… still running Android, so big effing deal. Funny how scared of Jobs this brave man was.
Jobs has yet to invent his greatest product… the iHaunt.
Better watch out Lie Jun. Your ancestors will not protect you from Lord Jobs. >:)
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Forgot to add… now maybe it’s time for Apple to seriously look into what it would take to start manufacturing their most critical products back here in the US. I can only imagine all the stealing to come out of those Chinese assembly plants now that Jobs is not around to keep them on their toes.
I would love to meet an American willing to work for $10 a day. Never mind a skilled American. Or even an illegal immigrant, for that matter.
There is absolutely no chance any manufacturing of consumer goods can be done in the US at the same (or similar) prices.
As for the oversight of Foxconn, Jobs wasn’t the one flying out there to look over their shoulders anyway. And it isn’t like Tim Cook is blissfully ignorant of the copying issue…
Because of mechanization there is very little labor in the cost of modern production. The biggest obstacle to manufacturing in the US is our taxation system.
We tax production, while most of our foreign competitors tax consumption. The benefit of the latter is that there aren’t any taxes embedded in the cost of their products. This can be quite expensive, amounting to as much as 20% of a US produced item.
The American worker is more productive than Asian workers. Change our tax system (FairTax.org) and a great deal of production would return to the US, while slowing the importation of foreign goods.
Predrag is right, even with taxes cut to the bone manufacturers can’t afford American labor.
As you said we tax productIon, but other countries do too. It’s called “Value Added Tax” which means that the product gets taxed each time that “value” is added, which means that every component, every step along the line from the factory to the store shelves adds to the cost of the product. But you correct in that the manufacturer doesn’t get charged these taxes, the consumer does. Which is why folks from Europe like to ask there American friends to shop for them as thing cost more over seas.
As far as automation goes, there isn’t as much as you think, that’s why the Foxconn factory has a higher population than some cities. And what would be the point in having Apple open factories full of robots in the states anyway? What jobs would that bring?
American factory jobs tend to be union jobs, and the unions don’t take minimum wage. Where as in China and Brazil workers wish they could make as much as the US minimum wage.
If the taxes were gone and the iPad was made here it likely cost twice as much just because of labor costs.
And we are no longer all that productive as a nation, we just aren’t hungry enough, though that may change sooner than later.
The sad truth is that manufacturing won’t come back to this country until we will take a wage so small that we can’t afford to by the things we make, just like the workers in Shenzhen. Taxes are only part of the issue.
If this is the case, that China has an unlimited labor pool that’s willing to work cheap, why has FoxConn (sp?) decided to add 300K robot assemblers?
If the robots are going to be put in place to that extent in China who’s to say that the US couldn’t begin to match assembly costs with our own robots?
Devices like the iPhone simply cannot be made by hand. Even with the price of Chinese labor, you’d be asked way more than you’d want to spend if they got rid of robots, and you’d be waiting 6 months after your order was placed for delivery.
Seriously? Should MDN recognize the megalomania of every tech titan wannabe? I had lived in China & I’m part Chinese but this news is totally irrelevant as it is offensive.
what offense are you offended by? The news itself or the reporting of that news? If you are offended by the reporting of the news, why? By some aspect of the reporting or merely the reporting of it in of itself? If the latter, why?
I think you mean, “if the FORMER…..”, since you already covered the LATTER in you previous two sentences.
Let me guess, you are somehow affiliated with this idiot LJ. Right? Are you his publicist? Sure sounds like it.
For sure he’s not a complete asshole like you who can’t read charts.
Paul, I think you mean “your previous two sentences”. You stated “you previous two sentences”. Let me guess………….blah,blah,blah.
I’m Chinese and I am not offended by reports of lousy Chinese companies or lousy Chinese CEOs. Americans should not feel offended by news that reports on lousy American companies and CEOs. Lousy is lousy. Great is great. Doesn’t matter what your skin color is. Only losers think in such narrow terms.
… Agree with you Bob!!!
Remember “dry walls” from China!
… I like chinese food 🙂
I’m offended by the lack of civility, not to mention, originality, of the fame-whoring Lie Jun. There are more pathetic creatures out there like him who would bask in the attention and are just waiting in the wings. MDN should just ignore him completely & not allow itself to be used. His crappy iPhone knockoff does not present a threat to the original super smartphone. He is a waste of column-inches in this website.
Classy…
Why does one need to wait for Steve Jobs to die to release another Android-based iPhone wanna-be??
What a tool
Disgusting story… sounds like terrible Hollywood picture.
Well. That’s one way to get airplay.
What an evil little insect.
“Next month will see the launch of a handset which outperforms the iPhone”.
Gimme a break! In what sense? Haven’t you heard, fella, it’s the whole experience that matters.
This is a complete coward, lacks respect & needs to go away soon! Because his phone must be a piece of Chinese Rip Off Shit! If he thinks it’s goin to beat Apple’s iPhone 4 Dream On! You don’t understand the first thing about respect for your competitors.
Outperforms iPhone in what way exactly? I suspect their version of siwe only tells you the nearest Chinese restaurant east of Peking.
Wow… to base your business’s future on the death of another individual is just bizarre and wrong. And to publicize that viewpoint?
I’ve been waiting ten years to see one of those much-hyped iPod killers and it still hasn’t happened. Competing with an iPod is relatively trivial compared to the challenges of competing with an iPhone.
What a delusional sick fuck, who openly admitted to taking advantage of the death of another human being.
The Chinese are mostly oblivious to this kind of nuance, or any irony in the statement. They’re also oblivious to the irony in … cheering for a real Chinese iPhone killer that was effectively 100% designed by Apple. The problem is you’re assuming because he’s president of the company means he has to be ‘smart.’ He doesn’t. He’s not. He’s about as nuanced and Jobsian as a fsckin’ bus driver.
And no, this is not a ‘lost in translation’ moment: the guy’s basing his whole company on making a cheap copy of the iPhone, what kind of person do you think he is?
A shame that a culture over 4000 years old and known for so many inventions is known mostly now for industrial espionage and copying.
Nice hat. Where’s your cattle?
Embargo that shithole. Obamanator hasn’t the ‘ands, so someone needs to step up and shut down that craphole of a thieving nation.
“Those prototypes are showing some production concerns, including flaking paint and cracking cases, according to local reports, though these are dismissed by Lie Jun in typical Jobsian style.”
Huh? If Apple had these problems, this would not have been dismissed by Steve.
Translation:
“We suck at design so much that our only real chance of success is waiting for the master to die”
Wow… I’m sure the end user experience on this device is top notch.
Lie Jun is the genuis. after steve j. die off lie set new standards you see. to tell me china steal intellectal properties make you look as clueless monkey. he who no idea of true inovation.the america imperalism is over.soon to surpass in military as the making of goods.
China4evar is the new zunetang. Got it.
Having lived in Asia and known many people of different ethnic background, including Chinese, one thing I’m certain of is that all of them are very aware of counterfeiting and fake brand name products, because those things have been all over Asia since the industrial age began. These people are also aware of the difference between the real thing and a fake, and the only reason a fake even makes sense is to fool casual observers at first glance that someone has the original, thus achieving some modicum of perceived status. Given a choice, all of them would turn their noses down on the fake and take the original without hesitation. As the Asian middle and upper classes evolve, the demand for top quality or original products (usually non-Chinese or Asian by their way of thinking) skyrockets. BMWs. Mercedes. Rolex. Italian and French designer fashions. Coke. Leica. Nikon… Apple. Etc. Apple will sell all the iPhones they can make just in China alone, if seeing the scalping of iPhone 4s’s for huge profits in Hong Kong is any indication. Even if the government bans them, the affluent Chinese consumer will get them on the black market for whatever price the market will bear. Just like the original iPhone sold in Russia, where Russians were buying round trip tickets to the States just to load up on iPhones and take them back to sell in Russia on the black market. Personally, I know a Ukranian-American real estate broker who made several trips to Russia with a suitcase full of iPhones and made more money doing this than selling real estate in a failing market. I highly doubt any copycat product will ever have this ability to generate demand approaching lust like the iPhone has. Nothing has changed since 2007 in that respect.
Interesting insight. Good to see a balanced thoughtful response.
All good points, shame you included BMW in your example though. Now a ghetto brand in my country. Somebody I know has one and all his friends call it “the clitoris” because it’s red and every **** has one.
I’m going to make a wild-ass guess here and suggest that all of your friends’ friends, and you, are male.
Oh, that asshole. DIAF.
#DestinedToFail
Pffft
The ONLY thing china could make for $200 that could be an “iPhone killer” would be a sledge hammer.
Keep your cheapshit android crap out of the news.
Just because Steve Jobs is gone doesn’t mean Apple won’t go after him if he’s done a copy of the iPhone. As far an android copy, who gives a darn. Virus infected crap is all you’ll get out of it.
Kind of harsh. Im sure all those no name chinese appstores are screened for malware and anything bad!;)