I picked up four (4) replica Rolexes from a street vendor in Shanghai for $10 total ($2.50 each). Yes, they work just fine.
Posted on 11/27/2006 2:18:29 AM PST by glorgau
It’s a funny old world. Chinese manufacturers are copying the circuit boards and designs of products from Japan and Korea, and they’re doing it so fast that by the time the originals arrive in the marketplace, they’re seen as the fakes!
China is a land of endless factories, with many pumping out the world’s most desirable gadgets, from iPods to portable computers to digital cameras and much more. But with so much electronics smarts to hand, the pirate electronics industry is very active.
Two reports on the Internet, here and here, have indicated that Chinese electronics pirates have been very busy, churning out excellent copies of LG’s Chocolate phone right down to the glowing touch-controlled keypad and smooth sliding action.
LG took so long to get a Chinese version ready, that by the time they launched theirs into the market, the copied Chinese version had been on sale for so long that LG’s phone was seen as the fake item copying the ‘original’ Chinese version.
Another example is the PSP. Rumoured to be coming out with in a version that contains a standard GSM mobile phone, a Chinese manufacturer came out with a phone that looks very much like a PSP, although not as wide, with a stack of pirated Nintendo games thrown in for good measure to beef up its gaming credentials, even if those games have been shamelessly ripped off from Nintendo.
Plenty of other goods, both electronic and otherwise, are routinely copied in China. Everything from designer clothes, handbags, Mont Blanc and other brand pens, expensive cars, golf clubs, jewellery, sports shoes (sneakers), many modern toys including many of the robots in the ‘Robosapien’ series and plenty more including CDs and DVDs is freely available from ‘markets’ all over China, and if you know where to look, at markets in Hong Kong, too.
The cars may not be so easily accessible from the markets, indeed that’s the one place you won’t find them, but the rest of the products are much more easily transportable and copyable that it’s no surprise they are widely available.
The electronics market is just the latest frontier, with costs of electronics production so low in China. Many of these products will not officially make it out of China, but will be smuggled out to appear in stores across Asia, and in likely much smaller quantities to first world Western countries.
The piracy of electronics is nothing new. In the 90s, I clearly remember fake Panasonic DVD players marked as ‘Panesoic’, a brand name so ridiculous only the incredibly dimwitted would mistake it for the original.
But sell these products do, especially in Asia where the prices are low, few questions are asked and in many cases, the quality is actually pretty good.
Samsung is said to have been so concerned by seeing its phones copied on the Chinese market that it tracked the distribution channels back to the source and discovered the electronics guys responsible for copying their latest products.
After offering them a job with Samsung and a chance to go legitimate, they are reported to have declined the offer, saying that they were able to make more money by simply continuing in their pirate ways. What Samsung did next is not known.
Eventually China will crack down on the blatant piracy seen on its shores, but until then, the world will keep on seeing ever more creative and ever better quality copies from Chinese manufacturers, along with complete duds that should definitely be avoided and products of varying quality everywhere in between.
What a funny old world we live in, where people will do almost anything and copy almost anything to make, or save, a buck.
Regards, Ivan
****Eventually China will crack down on the blatant piracy seen on its shores, ****
Come on----Give us a break here. You cant really believe that.
Come on----Give us a break here. You cant really believe that.
We were applying for World patents on some of our products. We were designating countries, and when the lawyers asked if we wanted to include China, everyone burst out laughing.
Ha! Fifty dollars? I was in a Radio Shack yesterday and they were selling DVD players for 20 bucks a pop. The saddest thing was they were being sold under the Philco name, an old, once respected name in America, now almost forgotten.
A standard DVD player has indeed come down in price; however the same economics applies to the new HD and Blu Ray DVD players.
Regards, Ivan
What those factories don't have to pay is the engineering costs used to develop those devices originally.
been gettin junk mail ads for replica rolexes-$79!!!
My company will not knowingly sell even one piece of equipment into mainland China for this reason.
The Chinese are intellectual property thieves. Period.
Pretty soon you will see big companies that have moved many of their manufacturing plants to China losing their IP.
Expect to see a Rotomola cell phone for $15.00 in the near future.
Expect to see a Rotomola cell phone for $15.00 in the near future.
One of my parts vendors has offshored teir manufacturing to China. The kicker is that it is an Export-contolled item.
I taunted them with, "Next year I am going to buy this $80 device for $10 from the Red Dragon Noodle and DPM Company, and you know it!"
If you are a golfer, you can go to Bejing and get a "golf tour". During this tour you can view the assembly of world-class golf clubs. For each "authentic" set, there was another with a Chinese brand plastered over it selling for $50. Knock off Irons, Woods, Putter, Speciality clubs, and leather golf bag cost $100 - $125.
And waht do you think the the Chinese do with all the money they make...??
Buy up american companies and make missles pointing at the rest of the world... ahh, capitalism, isn't it great!
Good point.
Sadly the majority of Americans fail to understand the Chinese mentality when it comes to business.
I could tell stories all day long of doing business in Asia that would curl many a FReepers hair.
I challenge anyone here to name one successful Chinese company along the lines of Toshiba, Sony, Hyundai, IBM, Ford, Colgate-Palmolive, ---- one just one.
Why would they give away free NINTENDO games along with a SONY PSP?
Level 1 is the type that even a blind fella could tell was fake. The watch simply looks ludicrous in terms of quality of finish, and the mechanical movement (we are talking about automatic and manual-winding watches here, not that trash one puts a battery into) normally gives up ghost within weeks (you'll be lucky if it lasts through several months of regular wearing).
The next level is a marked improvement from the first. For one, the finishing is quite good. For instance a fake Rolex will have the heft and look of the authentic thing, and even have the hologram ...however comparing the real thing with the fake will easily trounce the fake. Also people who know watches can still be able to tell these watches as fake, at times with abundant ease. As for the movement ...well, if one REALLY takes care of the watch then it can last over a year. If REALLY REALLY good care is taken, and the person only wears it once a week or something like that, then the Chinese-made movement can last longer than that. However there is no need to service the watch, but it can fool most people who don't own an authentic version of that watch (next time you see someone wearing a Breguet yet his salary doesn't make him able to afford a US$ 50,000 watch then questions have to be asked).
This brings me to the third and final level. These watches are a nuisance to watch collectors since they are made to exacting standards. While there are several levels in each level (e.g level 3 has 3 levels in itself), the utmost level is almost (note:almost) indifferentiable from the real thing. What is worse is many times they will use authentic watch movements (be especially wary if your watch has an ETA movement, since level 3 watches sometimes use real ETA movements). The crystal is sapphire ....just like the real thing. It gets very hard for MOST people, even people with an authentic watch next to them, to distinguish the very best of level 3.
This is one reason buying watches from EBay can be tricky. While there are rules discouraging selling 'couterfeit' items, and in most cases real watch savants can be able to sniff a fake from a mile off, there are SOME 'fake' watches that are truly hard to spot. The redeeming thing about these watches is that they tend to be more expensive than your typical 10-dollar rolex (I've seen some going for 4K, which though expensive seems a deal when the real thing is 15K going up).
There was a story sometime last year about a Chinese factory that would make a Japanese motorcycle (under license) during the day, and at night have another shift making the same exact motorcycle, but branding it under a Chinese name. In this case the only difference between the two motorcycles was that one had the Japanese brand (and was legally made), while the second had a Chinese moniker and was illegal. Maybe the same thing happens with the level 3 watches ....whcih is possible since the sapphire crystals used by many of the Swiss companies are made in China, some of the components made for the ETA movements are made in China too. Thus it wouldn't take too much effort to make a 'fake' watch using 'real' parts.
Anyways, I wonder what it will take for piracy and counterfeiting to stop, but one thing is for sure ....there is a truckload of cash to be made faking things. And as the Chinese get better at making better quality items for cheap then the level of quality found in fakes will continue to increase.
It'll stop when the price of doing business is too high. And yeah, the Chinese government knows how to make the "price" of doing something too high - it's the stock in trade of all that is totalitarian.
I picked up four (4) replica Rolexes from a street vendor in Shanghai for $10 total ($2.50 each). Yes, they work just fine.
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