What's To Stop Copycats?

[Nova]

Seriously now, think to about half a year from now, when this whole thing takes off.



What's to stop some chinese company completely copying the Pandora, only with cheaper parts and manufacturing driving down the cost of the console?

I mean as far as I'm aware it's completely made from freely available and open hardware, and obviously the OS will be open source, right?
So are there any patents or anything on this thing to stop copycat asian manufacturers taking Craig and co out of business by completely cloning the Pandora, naming it something different and selling it for 2/3rds of the price?

This worries me...

 

[sindbad]

Obscurity.

 

[mali]

ED said on the German board, that TI's business philosophy would make this nearly impossible, because they don't sell their SoCs to knock off manufacturers. They somehow protect their partners this way.

 

[Nova]

ED said on the German board, that TI's business philosophy would make this nearly impossible, because they don't sell their SoCs to knock off manufacturers. They somehow protect their parters this way.




Excellent. That's a relief to me. I would not like to see the little guy go down just because they got there first.

 

[RajTakhar]

No doubt they will copy it

Invariably they usually do when it comes to things like the standard MP3/4 players

Yep it will probably be cheaper - but ..

The screen will probably be crap
The keyboard like banging a nail with a hammer
The joypad should work
The analoug nubs - forget get
The overall build will probably be very shiny, scratch in yer hand, and break in places within a few weeks

Yes it will probably come in at a quarter of the price, but withhout

Any decent CPU
Any decent battery life
Only run emulators that you have to download from a chinese web-sitea and have to guess what they are for
Have emulators which will be crap for anything which is not an 8-bit sega or nintendo
MORE IMPORTANTLY - not have a community like this which will constantly be producing quality software - emulators, homebrew games, mods,etc

You do the maths and think about it

 

[MonkeyChops]

only with cheaper parts

doomed to fail when compared to the pandora who did not cut corners with quality parts

you get what you pay for.... usually

 

[quasist]

I thing we should burn down all pandora's hardware and project data to stop copycats

 

[OrR]

The Pandora is really quite cheap. I can't see even a Chinese copyshop shaving off much of that price. Probably not enough to make too many people buy the copy instead of the original.

 

[puppydee]

Recieved mine yesterday, it's called a Wangdora and it was £157.99

 

[DAP]

Why should anything be done about copying?
A copy would be a sign of success, that this device is the start of a standard rather than a dead end one company product.
If it weren't for the PC clones, there never would have been the generic PC that is the foundation on which Linux was built.
Besides, by the time there is a copy, the Pandora guys may be having trouble producing enough to meet the demand.
May the best product win.

 

[(naw)mcx]

Wangdora
You are lucky Photoshop ain't working.

 

[Hooka]

Even if it did happen, think about the last time something major like that happened... I believe they were called PC Compatibles I'm sure that it would suck for Craigix to have to compete against knock-offs, but would help spread the pandora and pandora compatibles AND reduce the price...

 

[craigix]

If they could pull it off we would probably email them asking how they managed to do it cheaper than us!

 

[kin]

I don't see that happening.

 

[Game_over]

The most that will happen, is that they knock off the case layout (the case design is already pretty common) make it a bit smaller, and go the usual PMP with one emulator route.

//Off topic statement: Yeah OBAMA!!!! It's cold out here.

But this always happens so no worries.

 

[Eternalodyssey]

Hey we could always hire the same lawyers the RIAA use. They did an awesome job of stopping piracy. Oh wait, never mind........................................

 

[peca]

If they could pull it off we would probably email them asking how they managed to do it cheaper than us!

I guess that Pandora is really low coast in comparison with similar equipped pocket computers (I mean Pocket PC and other PDA with similar CPU, display and so). Regardless that there is not any comparison as good equipped as Pandora is. But I fear that cheap (cheaper than Pandora) clones can be made. By "cheap" I mean really cheap and poor made (other CPU, worse display, bad plastics...) Maybe not real clone, but imitation (You know, as NDS or iPhone imitations). It does mean real jeopardy, just can confuse less informed customers - such (grand)parents buying it for child usually are.

 

[Username]

China will rip off anything. Rest assured, the button response will be terrible, the "analog sticks" will not move at all and will be just for decoration, and it will only run one emulator with a handful of games (using a random name generator to stretch out about 20 games to about 1000). Trust me, I own one of those things.

 

[Hotcooler]

Actually I dont think that buying an actual Pandora by granny for her 10y.o. grandson is better idea.. This is kinda umm.. more mature product... or something

 

[Alpha2]

They're too busy making fake nintendo wiis that play NES roms to even think about it.