Author Topic: NEC's evil twin (Read 418 times)

guyjin · « **on:** April 28, 2006, 12:33:39 AM »

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/business/nec.php

Quote

[NEC] said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company.

wonder if they made any PC Engines...

esteban · « **Reply #1 on:** April 28, 2006, 09:30:38 AM »

Quote from: "guyjin"

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/business/nec.php

Quote
[NEC] said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company.

wonder if they made any PC Engines...

That was an absolutely insane article! Very sophisticated methods were used (i.e. many manufacturers thought they had actually landed a legit contract with NEC) ... and very scary. Have you folks seen the fake iPods? Pretty convincing, I'd say. And considering how popular and expensive iPods are, I'm surprised we haven't seen iFakes sooner... A long time ago, I stopped buying Gameboy games off of ebay because I got screwed too many times with counterfeits.

Back to the article: I love the fact that the real NEC was getting customer complaints about products they don't even make! Imagine being in customer service -- you'd think all these folks were smoking crack!

"I'm sorry, you must be mistaken. NEC does not currently offer an mp3 player in any of our product lines."

"But I just bought one yesterday! And the manual provided *this very phone number* for customer assistance."

"???!!! I'm sorry, you must be mistaken..."

FM-77 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 28, 2006, 10:54:01 AM »

They were selling counterfeit Game Boy Advance SP systems here in Sweden a few years ago. The seller didn't even know that they were counterfeit, the only outer cosmetic difference were the screws -- they were entirely different.

Keranu · « **Reply #3 on:** April 28, 2006, 11:38:38 AM »

Wow, that's an amazing article. You think there are another other pirate companies of major companies? Insane.

NEC Avenue · « **Reply #4 on:** June 16, 2006, 05:19:18 AM »

Actually NEC did rebadge (under license) MP3 players from other manufacturers and sold them in asian markets.

For example this NEC D-Cube player is a rebadged Cowon/iAudio CW200. I have one of these.

http://www.goldenshop.com.hk/AI-trad/portable/dcube.htm

Here's another NEC MP3 player but this model was designed by NEC themselves instead of a rebadge.

http://www.nec-computers.com/News/news.asp?ID_NEWS=84&CNT=113

NEC also has a new HDD based MP3 player that was recently introduced.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/6002/nec_votol.html

http://121ware.com/votol/

esteban · « **Reply #5 on:** June 16, 2006, 07:07:52 AM »

Quote from: "NEC Avenue"

Actually NEC did rebadge (under license) MP3 players from other manufacturers and sold them in asian markets.

For example this NEC D-Cube player is a rebadged Cowon/iAudio CW200. I have one of these.

http://www.goldenshop.com.hk/AI-trad/portable/dcube.htm

Here's another NEC MP3 player but this model was designed by NEC themselves instead of a rebadge.

http://www.nec-computers.com/News/news.asp?ID_NEWS=84&CNT=113

NEC also has a new HDD based MP3 player that was recently introduced.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/6002/nec_votol.html

http://121ware.com/votol/

Yes, I remember a recent slashdot or digg article that featured the VOTOL mp3 player. Very creative indicator for battery strength on that thing

grahf · « **Reply #6 on:** June 16, 2006, 11:20:38 AM »

I read about this on another forum a little while ago. Pretty crazy stuff to happen on this scale.