Windows Phone Thoughts: 'Blockberry' Gets Presidential Endorsement: Not!

"We all know Obama uses Blackberry phone, and right now the China shanzhai phone maker haff-comm is using this information to promote their new shanzhai phone blockberry 9500 and has Obama's figure appeared in this phone's poster with a slogan 'Obama have Blackberry, I have blockberry'."

The phone itself is more than half decent, assuming we can trust the published specs - is that really a SiRFStar III? - but the advertising is, shall we say, using the time-honoured Asian tradition of free-riding on somebody else's brand (and in this case, someone's very well-known face) to sell your own products, right down to the model number and logo. I don't think anyone is really seriously taken in by that particular sleight of hand, but building your own brand can be an expensive and time-consuming business. The temptation to take shortcuts can be very appealing, ethics be damned, especially when there's little-to-no enforcement of IP law. If you weren't aware of it already, this ad neatly encapsulates some of the intellectual property problems in developing countries - I think protection of IP in China is at least another generation away from really being where it should be, and blatant transgressions like this won't be tolerated any more.