Ruslan Kogan speaks on Chinese 'œAgora' clone

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 21 January 2009 08:15

IT Industry - Strategy

After having read my article on the Alibaba.com Agora clones, Ruslan Kogan contacted iTWire through his PR company, Professional Public Relations, with the following statement:

"I am not aware of this manufacturer and I have doubts that it runs Android OS. It is certainly not what the Agora was going to be or in anyway related to it."

Given that the manufacturer of the G8000 Google Phone is listed as the “Shenzhen JoinCyber Telecom Equipment Co., Ltd.”, and given that Kogan would be pretty well acquainted with a range of Chinese manufacturers, the only conclusion we can draw is that a competing manufacturer did what a lot of Chinese manufacturers do: made a clone phone.

As there are so many clone phones out there, from iPhone to Nokia and many other brands, I guess it comes as no great surprise to see what was expected to be a major Android model being cloned, too.

As the Agora phone has now been discontinued, the ploy to create a clone phone would seem to have backfired.

In addition, as Kogan has doubts the phone is truly running the Google Android OS, the question then becomes, what is the phone truly running?

Windows Mobile 6.1, or a “home grown” operating system?

Unless someone actually buys one of these models or sees one for sale in a Hong Kong phone store (or elsewhere in Asia), I guess we’ll never know.

It also raises the question: what happened to the quantity of real Agora phones that Kogan claims was manufactured and on the verge of being ready to ship?