Copying a few pages from the playbook of Apple Inc.'s iPhone strategy, which brings many of the powers of the internet to mobile phones, is no way to beat the computer interloper at its game.
But that's exactly what many of the world's biggest handsets makers are trying to do with new copycat phones and services that ape key features of the iPhone.
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the world's biggest annual trade show for the wireless industry, Apple is everywhere and nowhere. The company avoids such events, preferring to unveil products at its own venues.
The handset business will produce more than a billion phones this year, but is suffering a crisis of confidence brought on by sharply changing business models that has only been exaggerated by the global economic slump.
"Imagination is expensive in a year such as this," said Richard Windsor, a technology analyst at the conference who is with Nomura Securities in London.
The giants of the phone industry - Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, LG Electronics Inc., Sony Ericsson and HTC Corp. - are humbling themselves to copy a company whose phones account for only one per cent of handsets.
A year ago, phone makers with quick-acting design teams came out with the first touchscreen iPhone look-alikes. This year, they are going further by seeking to duplicate the iPhone's user interface software.
Privately, an executive with a major European telecommunications operator complains: "Everybody is trying to catch the iPhone. They are pushing things out to market that just aren't ready for prime-time".
Analysts say the clones often perform slowly and are less intuitive for users than the iPhone.
Case in point: South Korean phone maker LG Electronics introduced an entry-level smartphone using Microsoft Corp's Windows Mobile operating system and a new iPhone-like look called "3D S-Class User Interface."
The most obvious difference with the iPhone is that LG's GM730 gives users three-dimensional views of its features and applications, which appear like cubes rather than pages, as they do on the iPhone.
But a demonstration of the iPhone wannabe reveals a characteristic flaw familiar to personal computer users. LG's logo and then the Windows brand hang on the screen as five, 10, 15, eventually 30 seconds pass. The phone is booting up, just like a computer, but unlike many of the faster phones.
Apple has sought to scare away competitors by threatening legal action to defend the hundreds of patented ideas it has rolled into the iPhone. How rivals can work around such patents remains a big question.
The proliferation of "me-too" products is a trap because products must take shortcuts or sacrifice profit margins to undercut Apple on price. That digs equipment makers into a deeper hole because smartphones have been faster growing and more profitable than other handsets.