China is a country of big numbers: one of the biggest land-areas in the world, the largest population, one of the biggest economies, and a lot of people joke half-seriously – the biggest source of knock-offs in the world.

                                          A map of China. and there's Manila at the lower right.

So it doesn’t surprise anyone, least of all me, when popular internet opinion of a product by the company Meizu turns to sneering indifference at the least, and total ignorance at worst. That would be a mistake though, as Meizu is making waves in the consumer electronics industry – but in a good way.

                                           Meizu admits to only a little bit of design plagiarism. Photo courtesy of Engadget.

Just who is Meizu anyway? This company has  made a name for itself as (surprise surprise) the Apple Knock-off King. They follow the normal pattern of taking the better known product – in this case Apple audio and video players, and then changing the general build and design as to escape litigation (not always successfully). But in the intervening year (since April 2006) that Meizu surfaced on the general Internet horizon, the company has made large strides in quality and in actually producing legit, well-functioning products.

The Meizu M6 is in its 2^nd generation, and by all accounts it’s set to splash into the Chinese market starting September 25^th. With our proximity to China and our importer’s willingness to embrace new products be it legit or not, we can hope to see this same product a month afterwards or so. I hope. The player sports a 7.3-mm profile housing a wonderful 2.4-inch display with 720x480 resolution. 26-hour continuous play in music mode can be expected, or 4.5 hours in video mode. And the clincher of the deal: reported prices online range from the low hundred dollars to around $220 for the largest capacities.

                                          The upcoming 8GB M6

No actual product has reached our shores as of yet, but from all the reports online, this is no simple knock-off – anticipation has been expressed for actually testing the unit, and Meizu’s plans seem to be seriously professional in most aspects (they still base their designs on Apple merchandise after all.)

Well, the title is kind of misleading – we can’t be sure whether it will be a knockout product along the lines of WOW Sing-along, but we definitely can’t call them just knock-offs anymore. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these.