China hungers for gadgets

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.

Chinese don't wait for Apple launch to get iPhone [AFP]

[#1 posted by zuzu , September 9, 2008 8:00 AM]

It's a curious situation, given that they make much of it in the first place.

* 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.)

[#2 posted by reflex , September 9, 2008 8:35 AM]

The situation is more convoluted, since over 500,000 first-edition iPhones were manufactured in China, exported, and then re-imported.

[#3 posted by clueless in brooklyn , September 9, 2008 9:17 AM]

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.

[#4 posted by trr , September 9, 2008 11:44 AM]

It's just like how the British import back their own spotted dick from the Moon.

What? Huh?

[#5 posted by behemoth , September 9, 2008 4:09 PM]

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?

[#6 posted by stephmur , September 9, 2008 8:35 PM]

Spotted Dick is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_Dick but the moon might just be a slight exaggeration.