News
Chinese iPod gadget aims to skin Apple
By: cnn.comPosted On: 08/17/2010 1:53 P
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Have you ever wished that your iPod Touch was an iPhone? Now it can be, thanks to a new device called the "Apple Peel 520" and created by a Chinese company.
Have you ever wished that your iPod Touch was an iPhone? Now it can be, thanks to a new device called the "Apple Peel 520" and created by a Chinese company.
Invented by a 22-year-old programmer who lives in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, the gadget is comprised of a case that fits around the outside of Apple's iPod Touch, a popular media player and Wi-Fi-enabled pocket computer with e-mail, maps and other applications.
The Apple Peel 520 case contains a battery, dock connector and SIM card that allows voice calls. Users will also have to install special software to enable a text messaging function, and to allow the device to properly work with the iPod Touch (users will have to break into the software of the iPod in order to download the necessary applications).
Once installed, the Apple Peel gets around five hours of talk time and 120 hours on standby, according to a review posted on Dailytech.com.
CNN interviewed the inventor of the device via QQ, a popular instant messaging service in China (he declined a phone interview and was only willing to offer his online name: "Maxpy").
When asked why he created the Apple Peel, Maxpy said it boiled down to economics: "Because I love the iPhone, but it's too expensive in China."
Maxpy said he began building the device last April, revealing the final product online about a month ago via a company he started called Yosion Technology.
The iPhone, which was officially launched on the mainland last October, more than two years after its debut in the US, costs between $588 - $740 while an iPod Touch is around $235. The Apple Peel sells for $57.
Analysts said a thriving gray market flooded with fake iPhones smuggled in from Hong Kong and the West has hurt legitimate sales of the Apple smart phone here.
The illegitimate phones are usually cheaper and contain functions, such as wireless Internet, that are not available on phones sold through legal channels.
"All of the potential users already had purchased an iPhone, they had found a way to buy one," Leo Wang, founder of Mobile 2.0 forum, a telecom and mobile organization, told CNN after the China launch of iPhone release last year. "The official iPhone is too expensive."
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