China Mobile planning to subvert Unicom's iPhone launch with the OPhone?

We've known for some time that China Mobile was planning to launch the KIRFy OPhone from Lenovo. Now, with word on the street that China Unicom has snagged the iPhone in that provider's home turf, a report from DigiTimes is suggesting that China Mobile might be trying to undermine the competition's supposed June iPhone launch by dropping the OPhone a month earlier. That sounds sensible enough, but are people there so eager for iPhone they'd jump on the imitation rather than wait another month for the real thing? We'll find out soon enough.

[Image courtesy of modmyGphone]

[Mpmav1 Posted Apr 20th 2009 12:29PM]

sweet!

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 20th 2009 12:42PM]

time to start practicing my "O" face.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 20th 2009 2:13PM]

Again ... I would love to see your side by side comparison of the iPhone and oPhone.

Tell me all the KIRFy things about the oPhone PLEASE!

I'll help you out with a few
Icons with rounded corners!
A software based numeric keypad!
A Weather App! Holy crap ... What a rip off...!!!!!
A calculator ! Good God .... Apple sue them already !

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 20th 2009 2:15PM]

?

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 20th 2009 2:30PM]

[superhobo Posted Apr 20th 2009 2:35PM]

I wholeheartedly agree!

[superhobo Posted Apr 20th 2009 2:37PM]

Note to Appletards:

APPLE DID NOT INVENT SQUARE ICONS WITH ROUNDED CORNERS

[sr1329 Posted Apr 21st 2009 3:11AM]

More like "are people so stupid to still buy the iPhone when this obviously superior phone exists?".

[chengdude Posted Apr 21st 2009 5:13AM]

Why would China Mobile be worried about the official launch of the iPhone in China? The iPhone has been "unofficially" launched for a long time now and anyone who really wants one already has one. Heck, China Mobile can count how many iPhones are already running on their network. Those hundreds of thousands of grey market iPhones are also probably better than the likely crippled version (no WiFi, unless there's some sea-change in government regulations in the works) to be offered by China Unicom.

By the way, the Lenovo phone looks a lot more like the Cowon S9 than the iPhone.