MyPhone is a Philippine mobile phonebrand and multimedia company by MySolid Technologies & Devices Corp. of Solid Group Incorporated.
History
Solid Group Inc., incorporated as United Paracale Mining Co. on October 9, 1993 and renamed to its current name in June 1996, is the company behind the MyPhone brand. The group owns the brand through MySolid Technologies and Devices Corporation. In 2010, the father of Solid Group's CEO, David Lim owned a mobile phone manufacturer which makes phones branded as "Amoy Solid". His father tasked his younger brother Jason to help sell the product due to being good in working with electronic gadgets in the Lim family. According to David, the Amoy Solid won't make much sales in the Philippines and remarked that “Just from the way it sounds, nobody wanted it,”, He however took note of the phones' dual SIM feature and suggested to rename the brand. Amoy Solid is rebranded as My|Phone. Solid Group applied for the registration of the MyPhone brand with the Intellectual Property Office on June 25, 2007. The brand was first introduced to the market by Solid Group in September 2007. MyPhone became the first mobile phone brand in the country to have a dual active SIM feature. The MyPhone brand grew into one of the primary part of Solid Group, accounting about half of the company's revenue as of 2011. On May 18, 2016, the company unveiled its line of ISDB-T-capable smartphones and tablets, thus becoming the third local smart device vendor to offer the feature. On November 7, 2016, MyPhone expanded into mobile app development and digital content, touting itself as "The Multimedia Company". MyPhone has also announced the AGILA lock screen app to be bundled with select smartphone models, allowing local businesses to display advertising on phones similar to Amazon's practice of "special offer" ads embedded on discounted devices.
Production and design
The mobile phones also include pre-installed applications and features designed by Filipino software developers. MyPhone mobile phones are reportedly manufactured in China in 2011. The most popular application pre-installed in MyPhone mobile phones as of the same year is the Catholic prayer app.
Market share
In a study made by International Data Corporation, MyPhone is the third biggest brand in the Philippines in terms of unit shipments in 2014 MyPhone is also distributed in Hong Kong to cater to Overseas Filipino Workers in the Chinese territory.
filed a lawsuit against Solid Group over the MyPhone name claiming that MyPhone is "confusingly similar" to its iPhone brand and that it would "likely to deceive or cause confusion". The Philippine Intellectual Property Office dismissed the case filed by Apple Inc. on May 19, 2015 stating that, while both brands are similarly named by using the word phone, the word in question is not sufficient grounds in causing confusing between the two brands and noted that phone is a generic term for mobile phones. IPO director Nathaniel Arevalo, criticized Apple Inc.'s move describing it as "a case of a giant trying to claim more territory than what it is entitled to, to the great prejudice of a local "Pinoy Phone" merchant who has managed to obtain a significant foothold in the mobile phone market through the marketing and sale of innovative products under a very distinctive trademark".
