Cutting edge mobile phones are getting ever more complicated but somehow the counterfeiters are managing to keep up with the latest technologies and produce some convincing fakes.

The industry isn’t new by any means, in 2004 customs officers in Hong Kong seized £600,000 worth of fake Nokia batteries destined for the UK. Nokia has been suffering at the hands of fakers for years with the Belgian watchdog fuming in 2003 after Nokia declared all their batteries to be safe. The watchdog found that in fact Nokia couldn’t guarantee that its batteries were safe, because consumers cannot distinguish between original and non-original batteries.

In 2007 Samsung carried out research to find out just how many counterfeit phones were in existence in Beijing and found a staggering 88 different models including models made by “Samsong” and “Samsumg”.

Uganda estimates that the government there loses $9 million every year in tax revenues when people buy counterfeit mobile phones. Despite an 8% drop in the sales of black market phones in recent years there are still 100,000 being sold in Uganda along every single year – a figure that represents 32% of the total mobile phone sales.

The recent developments in fake phones have mainly been centred around the iPhone with a whole host of fake devices showing up for sale on sites such as eBay. Some are very poor (such as the “Ipod style Mobile Phone iPhone” below) while others appear almost to be the real thing.

Ipod style Mobile Phone iPhone

Amazingly this device was on sale after the real iPhone was unveiled so the seller can’t claim to not have known about the touch screen and lack of buttons. Note the second leaf on the Apple logo – cunning.

The Ciphone

Probably the most realistic fake iPhone on the market this device comes from a whole family of iPhone clones such as the Hiphone and the A380 (presumably named after the giant aircraft).

The strangest fake phone is the A6 – the manufacturers website claims that “it shakes with ‘wong wong’ sound as you touch the screen”.

Rock solid 99% iPhone

The next iPhone clone is apparently a “the ultimate rock solid 99% iPhone clone and is selling like crazy. It is unlocked so just plug your SIM card in and you are good to go. Comes with one year warranty. Sells for only US$219. No contracts. No rate plans. Just your existing SIM card is enough”.

Owners are reporting that the claim to be 99% iPhone isn’t quite the case.

Nokia N95 & N73 Clones

Apple isn’t the only company to face the problem of counterfeit mobile phones – as you can see from the video below some enterprising retailers are selling Nokia N95 phones on eBay for $450 – not cheap at all.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x2E1ZL_7O0[/video]

Nokia also has clones of popular devices such as the N73, shown below. This is actually a pretty convincing fake and anybody buying the device might not even notice at first.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSN1ovcnPkI[/video]

Sony Ericsson W800i clones

The manufacturer of this fake Sony Ericsson W800i has a reasonable defence against their actions:

• Our “fake” phone is cheaper with the same multimedia features
• No we didn’t put Sony Ericsson logo on it, so we did nothing wrong
• w800i is too expensive! We make profit at only 25% of its price
• Please support “fake” phone, we dun like Japanese products

Ferrari phone

Not sure who would be more upset about this device – Sony Ericsson or Ferrari. It certainly isn’t classy enough to be a Ferrari phone.

BMW Phone

The fact that BMW had nothing to do with this phone is quite easy to figure out. It looks pretty poor compared to the sleek lines of a real BMW.

Audi TT & Porsche Cayenne fakes

Finally a couple more high end car manufacturers that don’t escape the fake phone treatment – Audi and Porsche are thought to be pretty upset at their names being used in these low quality devices.