iPhone Neo One runs Android and costs £196

While the world plus dog awaits the iPhone 5s with baited breath, the fine people of Brazil are already able to buy a new kind of iPhone – one that ships without being locked down with Apple's iOS. Strange. KitGuru looks at a pile of 196 pound coins and wonders if the new device from iGB will be worth it.

One look at Wikipedia on the subject of ‘Who invented the telephone‘ gives you all you need to know about the differences between ‘idea', ‘invention', ‘patent', ‘standard' and ‘production'.

Coming up with an idea first is not always a guarantee that you will succeed in cornering the market for that idea.  Similarly, being world famous for something does not guarantee that you own the name.

We won't go anywhere near the paranoia of major brand-holders trying to walk the tightrope between (a) being very happy that the world knows their product as a household word and (b) the fear that it will become a generic verb. To hoover the carpet or google something – where the capital letter is missing and the link between ‘the word itself' and ‘the inventor making money' is broken.

Founded in 1964, electronics giant iGB now employs close to 20,000 people and enjoys annual revenues of more than $20 billion.

It also invented the iPhone seven years before Apple.

So far, iGB appears to have been very reasonable about the American upstart coming into its market to push weird iPhones running something called iOS – but that might change in the wake of Apple unsuccessfully attempting to sue iGB into submission and force the Android-powered iPhone Neo One out of the market.

You really couldn't make this stuff up.

KitGuru says:If you're ever lucky enough to invent something genuinely useful and commercial, dear reader, then patent the hell out of it – in every market possible – to prevent what Apple has done to poor iGB. Wink.

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