02 Feb 10 Meizu has no plans for an “mPad”
Let’s rewind back to January 2007. The iPhone was just announced to the public, who gave it a fairly tepid reception . Many liked the cool multi-touch interface, but weren’t too fond of its bland design and hefty price tag. Analysts and other mobile phone manufacturers scoffed at Apple for believing they could gain any significant amount of marketshare. And of course there was the legal battle with Cisco over the actual name of the device. Sounds familiar? The initial reaction to the iPad clearly has many parallels to the iPhone’s launch. We all know how well the latter turned out for Apple, but we’ll have to wait and see how successful they’ll be with their tablet.
Besides pointing out the lessons learned from the iPhone, I brought this up for another reason. Shortly after the iPhone became official, Meizu’s CEO J.Wong released some new renderings of thei “miniOne” aka the M8. It was undoubtedly an iPhone clone, which became even more apparent in the years leading up to its release. So with the iPad now official, many people at the official Meizu forums thought history would be repeating itself again. Fans created renders of a supposed “mPad” like the one you see above. J. Wong eventually stepped in and said the following (translated from Chinese): ” Stop the photoshop work. I do not have the slightest interest in creating a big MP4! Not enough to lose face”. Considering how long it took them to release the M8, that’s probably a good idea. Still, Chinese companies have certainly stepped up the quality of their PMP’s in the past few years, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the inevitable “ChiPads” that get released over there.
via Cloned in China
