K-touch (Tianyu 天宇or天语, benephon), a Chinese Shanzhaiji maker a few years ago, reached the top spot in domestic brands (in terms of sales). It sold 17 million handsets last year, beating all the big boys (Ningbo Bird, Xiameng Amoi, Lenovo Handset), and plans to sell 30 millions this year. Recently it also raised 530 m RMB from US private equity firm Warburg Pincus (Chinese news here). The following is a picture of upcoming Tianyu K-touch in series C800 8M camera phone. The MSRP will be CNY 2800 (about $400). A comparable phone from Nokia will cost twice, according to Tianyu. You can read see more C800 pictures at softpedia.
In Chinese 天语 means voice from heaven. Romantic name, isn’t it?
Separately, Motorola, the grand daddy of mobile phone, launched this ZN5 5M camera phone in Beijing recently. It got some cool features such as Wifi, and a user can print photos from the phone to Kodak printer.
(source: CNET)
Shanzhaiji Video by CCTV
CCTV-2 “Economy 30 minutes” had a show dedicated to Shanzhaiji: its cause and its effect. As name implied, it’s about 28 mins long.
(Source: tudou; click here if the above video does not work.)
Note connection to Tudou from the US is slow, I found a better approach is download the video first (need to register at tudou, download a software called iTudou), then watch.