Despite the fact that most Chinese companies involved in the field of consumer electronics are pretty serious OEMs (and even ODMs), there are also many such firms whose business model involves copying the overall design and features of some of the best-known products from the Western markets. And this is exactly the case with the particular item you'll read about as follows, a still-prototype eBook reader developed by a company called Founder International, Inc.

As our colleagues from Japanese website Tech-On inform us, the device you see in the picture was showcased at a recent Tokyo technology fair dedicated to digital publishing. The company promoting it was, however, not some unknown Shenzen-based manufacturer, but one of the largest IT firms in China, Peking University Founder Group Corp., via its Japanese arm, the Founder International Inc.

As you can see for yourselves, the similarities to Amazon's Kindle 2 are quite striking, but Founder International's reps apparently claimed that there was absolutely no relation between the two (yes, we get it, you're not paying any licensing fees, but that's really not a surprise). According to the same source, this gadget was developed independently and uses E-Ink's electronic paper, the same solution used by the Kindle 2.

The form factor is almost identical to Amazon's product, and the same goes for the controls. Of course, there are some differences, but not some that "jump up" at first sight.

While the “Wefound” reader is still in prototype phase right now, it seems that its manufacturers plan to release a fully functional version by 2010, which will be using a SIM card for connecting to the Internet and downloading data, at the same time retailing for somewhere in the vicinity of 200 US dollars. Wonder what Amazon will have to say about all of this...


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