The AFP reports that the Chinese are sick of being last in the gadget-availability game, and go to great lengths to import high-tech items from the U.S. It’s a curious situation, given that they make much of it in the first place.
Plans to introduce the [iPhone] are conspicuously more advanced in West Africa than in China, the world’s largest mobile phone market, with more than 600 million cellphone users. … In the meantime, Chinese consumers are not waiting for Jobs. The country is widely considered the world’s biggest market for smuggled, “unlocked” and counterfeited iPhones. More than 500,000 first-edition iPhones made their way to China, or nearly a tenth of the phone’s global shipments of 5.2 million from June 2007 through March 2008, according to estimates from In-Stat.
Some estimates indicate 40 percent of all “unlocked” iPhones are in China.
It’s just like how the British import back their own spotted dick from the Moon. So ironic.
* duty free
* bonded warehouse
* free port / free economic zones
* Special Economic Zone (SEZ)
Oh, the complexities of multilateral attempts at free-trade without permitting genuine Free Trade…
(It’s like open-source that isn’t Free Software, to use an analogy.)
The situation is more convoluted, since over 500,000 first-edition iPhones were manufactured in China, exported, and then re-imported.
I went to chinese restaurant that is an actual favorite among chinese families in the bowery (NYC) last weekend. There was a large group next to ours that had at least two fake iPhones.
They were clearly made to look like an iPhone, just a little thicker and a little less rounded, but it had iPhone apps on it. I tried to get a picture, but didn’t.. too many lychee martinis I suppose, but it was pretty funny.
It’s just like how the British import back their own spotted dick from the Moon.
What? Huh?
TRR Posted:
“It’s just like how the British import back their own spotted dick from the Moon.
What? Huh?”
Came here to post exactly this. As a Brit, let me say;
What the fuck?
Spotted Dick is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_Dick but the moon might just be a slight exaggeration.