Local Chinese brands who made a killer selling a ton of those devices in India are having a tough time. After the security concerns last year that saw all phones without proper IMEI banned, the Indian government has again comedown heavily on these phones and this time banned them altogether. The concern this time is spyware and malware that exposes Indian telecom networks to intelligence agencies across the border. So is it the Chinese hackers troubling the government now? Last years IMEI raid itself caused a lot of the Chinese phones to disappear from the market and a workaround with proper IMEI labeled handsets came in shortly. This move by the government will immensely help new entrants in the market like Micromaxx who have been pushing not too expensive handsets lately and reports indicated that Micromaxx has become the third largest seller of cellphones in India. More than the security concern my concern with these Chinese phones is more towards the rip-off design and UI. It happens more than often now that some Tom Dick or Harry takes out a iphone or a nokia and as soon as I ask him what apps he/she is using the reply is a blank look as if I asked his phone to warm my coffee. The point here is that I ain’t particularly against Chinese phones, but the lack of innovation and originality hurts me. And sadly a lot of the recent Indian brands who are advertising their mobile phone offerings proudly on national TV are selling nothing but these same Chinese phones with a new packing, nothing new, nothing original, zero innovation!