Beijing regulators are trying to ban the iPhone 6 because they think it looks too much like an obscure Chinese phone no one has ever heard of

Have you heard of the Shenzhen Baili 100C smartphone?

Of course you haven't.

And, as far as I can tell, Google hasn't either.

Search around and you'll only get a flood of recent headlines from Friday that says regulators in Beijing have ordered Apple to stop selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in that city because it looks too much like the Baili 100c. I'm not even sure Shenzhen Baili has a website, and its company listing on Bloomberg is almost barren.

For all we know it's a guy in a garage with a soldering gun.

Apple says it plans to appeal the ruling, and the order has been stayed for now.

But the tech world was panicking Friday because China is currently Apple's most important market. An iPhone sales ban — even in one city, and even for an outdated model that's going out of production soon — could be a signal that China plans to crack down on an American company encroaching on its territory.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of phones from Chinese companies that appear to borrow heavily from Apple's designs. Check out the Oppo F1 Plus, for example:

Oppo

For now, the ruling in Beijing against Apple is likely almost meaningless.