Many brands that once hogged headlines on GizChina are no more. iOcean, THL (although they keep ‘coming back’ every year), Neo, Amoi, FAEA… the list goes on and on. These brands are nowhere to be seen, and a big reason for their disappearance have been brands like Xiaomi, and later, Meizu.
There’s another set of Chinese phone makers though, that seems less affected by the onslaught of Xiaomi and the likes. These were brands that dealt only in clones. GooPhone and Dakele are some of the biggest names in the iPhone cloning (also referred to as ‘ChiPhone’) industry… at least one of them is, because Dakele is no more.
Gizchina News of the week
This bit of news comes from Dakele CEO, Ding Xiuhong who took to Weibo to share the development about his company shutting shop.
We’d like to ask here: is it the end of an era? Is the Chinese market finally in line with its developed counterparts in the West? Now that China has its own Apple (read: Xiaomi), and its dwellers enough purchasing power to get the real thing, the future looks bleak for clone makers.