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China is legendary for not protecting intellectual property, copyrights, or anything close. Ripping of products is a huge loss to the companies that actually invest in developing the technologies and productizing them. But this has got to be a first. An entire ’shadow company’ existed pretending to be NEC.
From EE Times (Fake NEC company found, says report, 4 May 2006):

While the theft of intellectual property and the copying of products has been a problem in southeast Asia for some time, Japan’s NEC has received the back-handed compliment of having an entire NEC company counterfeited, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.

The existence of the false NEC, which operated mainly in China but seemed to have been controlled by entities in Japan and Taiwan, came to light after two years of investigations, the report said.

The fake NEC had developed a portfolio of about 50 counterfeit products, including home entertainment systems, MP3 players, batteries, microphones and DVD players. In addition to copying NEC products the bogus company had developed products of its own that are not in the legitimate NEC’s range.

In some aspects the fake NEC behaved as a legitimate company, handing out manufacturing contracts and licensing Chinese companies to use its designs, but all the time under the NEC brand, to which it had no right, the report said.

“These entities are part of a sophisticated ring, coordinated by two key entities based in Taiwan and Japan, which has attempted to completely assume the NEC brand,” the report quoted Fujio Okada, senior vice president and general manager of NEC’s legal division saying in written answers to questions.

The report said NEC had declined to identify the offenders for legal reasons and that it was unable to estimate the value of goods sold by the illegal company.

I mean this is unbelieveable! It’s one thing to have the design for a product stolen… it’s quite another to build an entire company, operating in public under NEC’s name, and even introducing their own products!

And we have to ask — how did it take NEC two years to figure out something this big was going on? Didn’t their subsidiary in China see the things around them?

Impossible to believe.

              

This is a very turbulent time in world events. Regardless of your feelings about how we reached this point, the USA and UK are presently engaged in battle in Iraq, and many are in harms way… both military personnel and innocents. How does this relate to wireless? It shouldn’t really. But today it was reported that US Rep. Darrell Issa, who represents a district in southern California, has been encouraging a change to post-war strategy. According to reports, the U.S. Agency for International Development intends to install a GSM wireless network in Iraq after the hostilities have ended.

Mr. Issa, however, sees a flaw with that plan.

According to Issa, the plans call for the use of GSM air-interface technology, and that is a problem. ‘If European GSM technology is deployed in Iraq, much of the equipment used to build the cell phone system would be manufactured in France, Germany and elsewhere in western and northern Europe. Furthermore, royalties would flow to French and European sources, not U.S. patent holders,’ he says. Instead, Issa wants the agency to deploy CDMA technology, which was developed by San Diego-based Qualcomm. He urged the agency to use ‘American-developed’ CDMA cell phone technology.

I understand that representatives especially see their role as bringing as much money to those they directly represent as possible, in this case Qualcomm. But this whole thing makes me sick. This is not a political issue or American vs. European issue. Let the people of Iraq get something that’s actually useful, a system that’s interoperable with their neighbors.

Normally I would not look to a politician to understand anything technical. And this is truely proving the point in this case. Mr. Issa - please stick to something you know about. Leave CDMA vs. GSM alone.

              

In January, Siemens announced a new brand of ‘fashion accessory phones’ called XELIBRI. The idea is that they have limited functionality but radically different industrial design making them more fashion accessories rather than strictly the business-end of cellphones. The idea would be that people would need multiple phones, like shoes, to match all of their fashion ‘needs’.

Apparently, Siemens is trying to carve out another niche market (taking changeable face-plates to the next dimension), and that’s a fine thing. Word is that the four models are being built by different ODM’s, such as Microcell.

Their new web site, https://www.xelibri.com/com/ is up and running now and taking pre-orders for the first four devices. After a brief tour of the site, however, I can tell that I’m clearly not supposed to be around these devices and I’m not hip enough to even ‘get it’. I wasn’t sure if the site was supposed to be ultra-cool or just insulting, and it seems almost like a strange parody on a previously conservative company.

“The trousers are sharp, the shirt’s just fine, the shoes are dapper and the watch strap used to be a crocodile. But the question remains, will the PCD (Personal Communication Device) match your magnificence? Pretty important if your’re (sic) doing the rounds of the clubs tonight…”

I guess if you’re in touch with the Christina Aguilera lifestyle, then this would be pretty important to you. So far, sounds pretty fashionable.

“Our well paid scientists have developed technolgies no-one ever thought would exist ‘Personal Communication Devices’ (PCDs) that use unique ‘conversation through air technology’. Just take an XELIBRI PCD. Dial a number that corresponds to that of another device : the owner of which can be almost anywhere, indoors or out, in good or bad weather. Then wait one moment. When they answer you can talk freely and without inhibition. Check your hair in a mirror and dry your palms on your backside, because you are about to meet tomorrow!”

We’ll leave my hair and backside out of this… but doesn’t ‘conversation through air’ sound like basic cellular service that’s been around since the mid-1980’s? Are these partygoers taking one to many illicit substances at the clubs that they’ve become unaware of cellphones’ ability to communicate indoors or out, regardless of weather???

“In return for a substantial pile of money, David LaChapelle has now shot the first Xelibri Calender. The result is no mere collection of pictures. Rather, images to take your breath away. Stunning PCDs (Personal Communication Devices), worn by fairly good-looking people in mundane situations.”

I am always looking for another calendar featuring fairly good-looking people carrying their phones in mundane situations… or was that mundane people in fairly good-looking situations…

“Move the mouse over XELIBRI 4 and see the close up. Note: Women may find this process arousing!”

OK, now we’ve just reached the point where either they think their target market is made up of complete idiots, or else someone was drinking just a little too much good German beer at the PR firm.

I suddenly care a lot less whether these phones are ever actually released.

              

One of stories from 3GSM last week concerned various announcements for software enabling Moblogs - where mobile phone users can update their Web logs (Blogs) by SMS or MMS. The carriers are certainly interested, since every new use of MMS allows them a new stream of revenue for moving the bits.

Another susposed trend is audioblogging, posting of audio clips instead of or with text. This would seem to be exceptionally appropriate application for cellphones. But there’s something about actually hearing a voice that changes the equation somewhat. I’m sure that there’s some good and interesting uses for this, but you can’t really skim through an audio clip. It also takes a good bit more work to transmit and receive audio than the written word.

Will this mobility allow more expression or creativity than before? Hard to tell…

              

The War on Spam has tried a few more conventional tactics, but is still not making any inroads against the unconventional spammers.

Starting last October 1 in Japan, it became law for unsolicited emails to carry the words ‘mishodaku kokoku’ (unsolicited advertisement) in the subject line of e-mail advertisements. Immediately, of course, Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo started filtering all email containing this legally mandated phrase. Now, several months in, their informal investigation shows that the spammers either skip putting on the required phrase, or else misspell the words in an attempt to appear to comply, but actually get past the filters.

Japan is also famous for having the ‘wangiri’ (single ring call) scheme. The companies call mobile phones but only ring once. This leaves an unanswered call notification on the cellphone. Many unsuspecting users try to return the call, and reach the scammers instead. This problem was so bad, it has even paralyzed local phone networks jammed with so many attempts to one-ring phones.

In the USA, the Attorney General for the state of Missouri has proposed legislation to set up a ‘no-spam’ list for the state similar to state ‘no-call’ lists that fine telemarketers from contacting any resident that has registered their number on the list.
Something tells me that any ‘wangiri’ legislation has the best chance of actually working. Like the ‘no-call’ list situation, when a marketer uses a telephone, even if they manage to disguise the number from the unknowing call receipient, they have to obtain service from and connect through a government-licensened common point, the telecom operator. They will be able to specificallly determine where the abuses are actually accessing from and cut off their service.

The internet, and by extension the mobile spam, has no such boundaries, including being able to spoof the origin of the message. But if the heat is on, the spammers can move to another country outside the jourisdiction of whatever law is enacted, something that is cost-prohibitive for telemarketers to do in scale.

              

The lack of cellphone etiquette has been stimulating much discussion, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. No one ever enjoys having their movie ruined by ringing phones, having their business meeting interrupted by someone ‘taking a call’, or being forced to hear half of someone else’s loud conversation during dinner. A new survey concludes that wireless users are more rude than ever.

There have been several technical approaches to keep those with bad manners subdued:

* Several countries, including Australia, India, Japan, and France allow electronic jamming in limited situations. The FCC (USA) and CWTA (Canada) make electronic jamming of wireless phones illegal, primarily because there’s no way to accurately control the radius of the jamming. The fear is that a legitimate emergency call may not be able to be placed and that other devices that share
cellphone frequencies would also be blocked.
* Other solutions, such as a Bluetooth-based solution require cooperation with the device manufacturers.
* A Japanese researcher has developed wood paneling he claims can passively block cell phone signals.

But now we hear that government feels that may need to step in to solve the ‘problem’. There is a proposal in New York City to levy a $50 fine on anyone who dials up or fails to turn off the phone’s ringer during an indoor performance. Not that the cops in New York don’t have anything better to do than to issue tickets if a phone rings! (How exactly will this salvage that ruined moment in the movie? I guess you can feel more justified yelling “Hey, there’s a $50 fine for that noise!”… of course, the yelling might just annoy even more moviegoers.)

Is legislation and extreme countermeasures the only way that we can break through and convince people to be courteous?

              

I am amused every time that I hear a new ‘M-Commerce’ prediction like ‘Cellular Phones May Replace Wallets‘. In this case it’s a bank in Japan that is developing a system to allow the user to store their ‘identity’ in their cellphone and then transmit via IrDA it to an ATM cash machine without carrying a seperate card. This would seem to be a natural extension of c-Mode, a specially equipped Coca-Cola vending machine that can scan a bar-code off of the cellphone screen in order to charge that cool drink to your phone bill.
But are these mearly solutions looking for a problem? Sure, I think that we’ve all had that time when we did not have enough change for a soda. I’m sure that there are people who wouldn’t mind going through the seven-step process to charge everything to their phone bill (and how many parents would suddenly shrink at the thought of letting their child have a cellphone!)
But are we really making anything more convienent? Do you want your ‘electronic identity’ stored in a device that’s easy to leave on the restaurant table or in the train car? Sure there can be passwords and other means of identification, but then how have we made it easier exactly?
Electronic payments may very well eventually end the role of paper currency and coin in the not-too-distant future, and then maybe we can talk about where the electronic information is stored.

              

The latest news from California finds that state government has weighed in on the topic of mobile spam. A law! A law! Perhaps the good people of California will be protected from spam as long as there is legislation! Unfortunately, instead of attaching the ‘death penalty’ (perhaps the only true deterrent), ‘those people who receive mobile spam will be able to sue the sender to recoup the money spent to receive each unwanted message.’

With an amazing sense of timing, The Register also reported this week that a recent poll showed that nearly 90% of companies surveyed aims to increase their spending on ‘email marketing’ in the next year.

One may argue that there are more costs associated with mobile spam. It often costs real money in SMS fees or packet charges. Fetching your email from an internet server via mobile phone costs more. Spam consumes resources, in either a wireless or fixed line environment. But rather than enact a powerless and unenforceable law from government (good for press releases, but not much else), attack the problem from the mobile ISP side. If the people really want to be protected, the carriers will find a way to work through the problem in order to gain a competive advantage over the other carriers. Screen bulk attempts to access their servers. Allow users to register spammers and automatically block. Stop assigning the phone’s number as a permanent email address that can’t be changed (doesn’t anyone learn from the NTT DoCoMo experience in Japan?)

I think the real reason we see this is that Gov. Gray Davis must have received one of those unsolicited adverts for a Brittany Spears ‘video’ that he couldn’t explain to his wife…

              

Last Wednesday the topic lit up the news services… Motorola security breach allows their 2003 plans to be published to the internet (see Yahoo! and similar news stories). But as quickly as the uproar started, it subsided and all of the ‘leaks’ have been plugged and the sites that originally published the information have removed it, presumably at Motorola’s urging.

But what exactly to make of all of this?

Anyone who has been anywhere around the Product Planning function of a large consumer electronics company knows that they have a great propensity to create wild fantastic product roadmaps with frequent wild wholesale changes to major blocks of features. Pretty easy to move things around in a PowerPoint presentation! Models come in and out of vogue with each iteration and conversation. The phones described were a wide range of models with features packed everywhere like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, plugin cameras, and multiple Symbian-based smartphones. So the information that was seen was likely speculative, dated, and not necessarily the basis of the engineering work in progress, even if it did come from a Motorola source.

But how exactly did it find its way on to a message board in the first place?

* Motorola itself? Not exactly in the habit of giving any useful information, let alone mistakenly posting sensitive confidential loot.
* Corporate espionage? But if you did all of the work to steal the secrets, you don’t give it away to everyone else for free.
* A disgruntled employee (or ex-employee)? What would they expect this to do to wound their former master?
* A partner company or carrier employee? I doubt if complete plans are given to anyone outside Motorola, and certainly they are going to know that it will be obvious where the leak came from.

So, my current guess is that this is a red herring. A little positive press about all of the wonderful inovations that are just around the corner from a company who’s stock has been in the dumpster for a while. Look at all of the wonderful things that will be shipping soon. And the best part is, the products don’t actually ever have to exist. Sometimes perception is reality, right?