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Chinese Pirates Copy iPhone, Make Improvements
An anonymous reader writes "Popular Science notes that manufacturers in China duplicate many well-know products. This includes the Apple iPhone, imitations of which are rolling off the assembly line already. That might actually be a good thing for some users, who might enjoy the user experience of China's own miniOne. 'It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers.' The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. 'The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.)' Using the iPhone as an example, the PopSci site walks through the process of making imitation technology."
iGroan.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Capitalism puts the smack down on the hippy dippy Apple company once again!
Blar.
Will it kill my cat?
Why am I on Slashdot? I'm bored. Why am I bored? I'm on Slashdot.
"The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system"
Doesn't that describe just about every single software project that anyone here has ever done? We either use something we already have, hack some other code into doing what we want, and then write new code as a last resort.
Sometimes I am astounded by the brilliance of the observations that are posted on the front page.
They are using "free market" ideals against us! What are they trying to do to us by making things we want, less expensive and less restrictive? But there's one thing the Chinese can't duplicate! That "Apple Logo" (tm) that makes me feel smart, warm and cozy every time I buy one of their products. At first, I found myself wanting to buy anything with an "i" in front of the name, but then I realized I was just being an iDiot (tm). Now I look for the Apple mark on it before I buy because then I know I will be happy... just look at all those happy people dancing! It's because of Apple right?
Open Source is an adequate response to the Cloner problem. If we can all make it, because its designed to be make-able by all in the first place, then there is no worries with the economy issue.
At this point, the question becomes: how fast can we all shift to an open/cloner form of economy, with local resources and local markets being properly managed in competition with the way they manage things in China? Answer that one, or at least have some sort of scope for the horizon, and maybe things will just get better and better for those of us who want nice, fast, cheap, easily reproducible hardware, for interesting uses
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
There is always a differance, you won't get the same hardware, it will be slower. You won't get the same software, it will be badly integrated with the rest of the phone. And most importantly I'm not sure we will ever see the sourcecode, and this is the bad thing. These phones won't sell that much, but if I ever get my hands on one I would love to have the Source code, ... I've talked with chinese firms it's hard enough to get it right when you have a contract.
I want one if it's cheap, and if I get the source, but that's because I can stand sucky interfaces to be able to fiddle with the source.
I spent alot of time in China working in the CE industry and this does not suprise me at all. The local culture is that to copy and improve is natural and not illegal.
:"In 2006, NEC, one of the 25 biggest consumer-electronics firms in the world, went public with the results of a two-year investigation. The company had been receiving complants about products it didn't even make: DVD players, cellphones, MP3 players. Investigators from International Risk, a private security firm employed by NEC, ultimately uncovered a shadow version of the company operating out of corporate offices in China, with ties to more than 50 manufacturing facilities. "On the surface, it looked like a series of intellectual-property infringements, but in reality a highly organized group has attempted to hijack the entire brand," says Steve Vickers, the former Hong Kong police inspector who was in charge of the investigation for International Risk. Executives had their own NEC business cards and e-mail add-resses. They had marketing plans and distribution networks in place. Some "company" facilities even had electronic signs bearing huge, lighted NEC logos. Most bold of all, the bogus NEC actually charged the manufacturers it worked with royalties on its designs. The investigation led to raids last year on 18 of the manufacturing sites and the seizure of nearly 50,000 fake products. Yet the factories themselves are still operating, just not using the NEC name. The ringleaders of the scam have yet to be caught; like the Samsung copiers, they are thought to still be making fakes."
9 767.stm
s eize-entire-brand/2006/05/29/1148754904830.html
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However that had not stopped Chinese firms using our own IP systems against us by patenting just about everything they can get their hands on and then seeking money via the courts.
In a very real sense, they are having their cake and eating it as well.
My favorite story was the fake NEC firm and thats also mentioned in TFA
I suspect the biggest problem was trying to persuade them that they had been breaking the law in the first place.
For more information on Chinese patents see..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/693
For more information on the fake NEC firm, see
http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/slick-pirates-
To see some fake chinese brands..
http://www.hemmy.net/2007/04/29/chinese-fake-bran
If you were an old fart like me you would remember when exactly the same criticisms were said about the cheap Japanese rip-offs that were flooding the market and undermining domestic products that were simply superior in every way. The very idea that Japan would, or could, become world class was laughable, just ask the British motorcycle industry - or the US motor industry
Beware complacency.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
TFA is mostly about China's counterfeit industry rather than an iPhone clone in particular. The iPhone clone of interest though is the Meizo M8 miniOne. Loads of pics online if you google it.
The title of this story is misleading and the story is as well. Pirates copy DVD's, not create new consumer electronics products.
The company in question, Meizu, has been working on this product since before the iPhone was launched and is planning to base the it on Windows Mobile 6. Some have said that Apple "ripped off" LG's touch screen phone but, it could be like this situation. One product inspires another. The only difference is the popularity of the product doing the inspiring.
Sure, its a clone but, not a rip-off. Thats the way tech goes. You make a good product & people will emulate and attempt to improve it.
BTW, I do own a Meizu MP3 player & wouldn't trade it for an iPod. http://http//en.meizu.com/product_m6.asp
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
I am inspired repeatedly by what I see in China. We are going this Christmas again, to be wowed by the explosion caused by freedom and true capitalism (uncluttered by regulations and taxes
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Funniest thing I have read on slashdot EVER! You do realize that in order to be listed on any Chinese stock exchange you have to be part owned by the Chinese government, don't you? You also realize that individuals cannot "own" land in China, you "rent" it from the government for 70 years. Foreign companies also cannot set up operations in China without having to partner with government affiliated companies. The government can and does shut down companies for no apparent reason. Not to mention the "uncluttered by regulations" part tends to result in highly unsafe products. The list goes on. Somehow, I don't equate "being able to make random knockoffs but cannot do anything without governments approval" to be "true capitalism"
Yeah, uncluttered regulations indeed.
Monstar L
They will eventually just clone Steve Jobs. I mean its an essential part of the i-brand experience, no?
Oh, sure the first versions will be of low quality - arrogant, angry, prone to bouts of outrage, hubris, violence.... posing a danger to all those around him..... but in time they will improve and eventually make a better Steve Jobs than the original.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Will anyone in the US be able to legally purchase and use a miniOne? Obviously people can and do buy large amounts of fake Louis Vuitton handbags, but you don't need to subscribe to a third-party to make use of the handbag. US cell phone companies will have to recognize and allow the miniOne into their cellular networks. Won't Apple lawyers have something to say about this? I'm not at all certain the miniOne would pass legal scrutiny.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I met a graphic designer on a train a few months ago who said that Indian design companies were using European designers to get there processes in place. They would invite these people over on favourable contracts and find out everything about how a design company should be run. The deals were often not as favourable as the designers first thought, but by the time they'd left their host company had already learned an awful lot from them.
This woman was a bit paranoid and anti-foreign but it did have a hint of plausibility about it.
I guess it's all a continuous cycle. I wonder whether within my lifetime, the US will go from world dominance to scratching around for a world role. It only took about 40 years for the British Empire to go from "sun never setting" to "small island in Northern Europe".
Peter
I've had a Chinese iPod Nano clone in my hands. It works fine. It's ugly, with a cheap-looking finish and a fake clickwheel that's really just 5 buttons. The power and data interfaces were USB, not Apple's iPod type. BUT
It had a bigger screen, supported video, had a built-in FM radio, handled most audio and video formats, and...
it had apple logos and names all over it! More and bigger than the real iPod. Who's going to stop them?
By the way it sold for 40 dollars equivalent in China.
Not to mention the "uncluttered by regulations" part tends to result in highly unsafe products. The list goes on. Somehow, I don't equate "being able to make random knockoffs but cannot do anything without governments approval" to be "true capitalism"
The safety of products sold is a prime reason to use a retailer and not buy wholesale yourself. Will Amazon or CVS or Wal-Mart sell unsafe products? They add their profit overhead to cover their infrastructure, but also to insure against buying faulty or dangerous products. If a product is deemed dangerous, they'll remove it from the market. If they find a large number of dangerous products from a given source, say China, they may go so far as to test products themselves before releasing them to the market. A large retailer can do way more, way faster, than the FDA, USDA or other organizations can. See: Underwriters Laboratories.
As for regulations, China is definitely not a regulated economy as much as the US is. China's provinces ("States") have varying degrees of regulations, with the least regulated ones growing the fastest. Doug Casey says about Shanghai "The dozens of hotels that can compete with those in Bangkok are starting to draw not just businessmen, but tourists. They like the beaches, and the shopping in a tax and regulation-free environment is incredible."
I've visitd Beijing and Shanghai, and I can tell you that government is quickly backing off of entrepreneurs and the business market. The booms in growth are amazing, along with the freedom that even a non-citizen has in starting new businesses. The same can be said about Dubai, where I'd love to at least have residency because of the unlimited opportunity to grow and blossom a business.
So dont eat your China-Iphone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Never underestimate the power of infinite cheap labor. My Dad was navigator for a squadron of Recon F-4s (RF-4s - sheep in wolf's clothing) that flew night missions in vietnam. Their job (occasionally) was to take pictures at night of the Ho Chi Mihn trail. The fighter/bombers would bomb the road during the day. The VC would literally drive trucks down the bombed-out road at night. They would have a crew with shovels in front and behind. One crew filled in the craters, the truck would driver over, one crew dug out the craters. If you flew over the next day, the road still looked "bombed out". Infinite cheap or free labor is a powerful thing.
meh
The iPhone is basically a box with a big touch screen. The iPhone design has so few distinguishing features that it's hard to see which parts of the design Apple could claim a trademark on. Furthermore, Apple wasn't even the first to ship such a phone, LG was.
"Piracy" means violating either copyrights or trademarks. So, if they put an Apple logo or some unique graphical design on the phone, that would be piracy. If they copied Apple code, that would be piracy. It seems unlikely that they did either.
They might run into some patents, but patent infringement isn't usually referred to as piracy. Furthermore, the only really novel functionality on the iPhone is multitouch (technology Apple didn't invent but bought), and I seriously doubt the clones even bothered with multitouch.
So, this kind of cloning is probably not piracy. And given the many limitations of the iPhone, this kind of cloning is a good thing for the consumer. Even if they were the same price, I'd want one of these Chinese phones because it sounds like a better phone to me.
It's basically decimated the local film industry - China should be a huge market, but basically it's ignored even by local filmmakers, who aim themselves at foreign audiences - hence all those lame Westernish Kung-Fu movies from Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. This is also true in Hong Kong, which has a history of excellence and two of the greatest directors in the world, Wong Kar Wai and Johnny To, who now rely on non-Chinese audiences or even have turned to making American movies.
Chinese manufacturers have to aim at the foreign market from day 1. Any successful product will be immediately copied by Chinese cut-rate manufacturers. It is economically infeasible to design a product for the Chinese market.
Imitations also are often of a much lower quality. Bootleg bottled water in Beijing was recently revealed to often be fake, using filtered Beijing tap water (you wouldn't want to drink it).
Local musicians aren't able to sell their CDs. Anything popular from local bands will be sold on the street for maybe fifty cents. There is basically no music scene in China, everything is bootlegged from Hong Kong or Taiwan or the US.
Goods in China are marginally cheaper, but it's at the expense of shoddy products that are often of a lower quality, and of a moribund IP development, and a lack of locally produced culture. There is no motivation to doing work or putting expense into research, if there's no economic reward - and there's no economic reward when your ideas are ripped off immediately.
I'd love to see all these people who are so opposed to IP restrictions actually consider their argument, rather than use it as their rationalization for why it's not stealing to download bootleg copies of "Transformers the Movie."
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The copy is better than the original.
For a long, long time, you could often only distinguish between the original and the "cheap" copy by looking at quality. A real Rolex usually beats the crap out of one of those cheap imitations in reliability, accuracy and longevity. A real shirt of some brand was usually much more resilent and had better seams than the rip offs.
This changed dramatically in the last few years. Especially in the electronics market.
Electronics vendors want to grab you in their stranglehold of vendor lock-in. They want you to use their, and only their, accessories, or at best some that they approve (and get royalties for). Add DRM and the need that they must not allow you to use your tool in the way you want and you know why the copy is actually "more" what you want. They already ignore trade laws by copying the brand, how much do they care for DRM? And on top of it, they certainly don't care about vendor lock-in, since, well, why should they help the company they copy?
Now the quality argument has been eroded away as well, since yes, the copies are made in cheap sweatshops in China. Guess what? SO ARE THE ORIGINALS! There is no quality argument anymore for brand vs. copy.
So we have two tools which are essentially of the same quality, but one wants to limit me while the other one doesn't care as long as I buy the thing. Question for 100: Which one will you buy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We either use something we already have, hack some other code into doing what we want, and then write new code as a last resort.
/sigh
... that's the hotbed of technology these days. Apple merely defines the specs, controls the integration, and marks up 10000000000% profit ....
Indeed. And that's a very GOOD thing, everyone building upon the work of others.
Pity that the west isn't into that. Instead we're into branding.
If the cheap clone were Linux-based then it wouldn't matter if it wasn't as slick as the iPhone, because we could improve it.
And it wouldn't matter if the hardware were somewhat slower, because we could optimize the kernel and libraries to make up for it.
In any case, where do people think that Apple get their components? Almost entirely from the far east
But those same good components are not Apple exclusives, they're available to anyone wanting them --- if they were exclusive to Apple, an iPhone would cost a grand or more.
Kudos to China and to all those focussed on making things instead of on branding.
No 3G..Battery soldered in...wait, that's the original iPhone!
The new fragrance from Calvin Klein.
Weezul wrote; Isn't the iPhone inherently "badly integrated" with itself because it lacks cut & paste?
John Gruber, of daringfireball.net, makes the argument that "it's good that the 1.0 iPhone shipped without them", even though he wishes this functionality were present.
If the US government were really interested in a competitive economy rather than merely protecting incumbent crony corporations, this Chinese competition would face even stiffer competition from American corporations knocking off stuff, too.
We could tell that the US government was interested in that competition, and not propping up incumbents with IP protectionism that only cripples American (and close economic allies like Western Europe and Japan) competition's chance to compete, if the IP controls like flimsy but unending patents and copyrights were discarded in favor of growth.
Not only would American competitors to these Chinese knockoffs benefit, but of course the consumers would benefit from the lower prices and innovations. Since consumers are most of the economy, along with the labor we sell to corporations, our economy would benefit.
Or, we can just let China eat our lunch, while we prohibit ourselves from fighting back.
--
make install -not war
I'm waiting for OpenMoko to launch. That seems like a device with a little more thought put into it than this clone. The guys in the article just seem to be interested solely in responding to Apple with a quick knockoff to make a few bucks.
I like music
We are going this Christmas again, to be wowed by the explosion caused by freedom and true capitalism (uncluttered by regulations and taxes).
uncluttered by regulation and taxes?????? Your kidding right... You may not have a tax listed as part of the price but because most companies are owned by the government the government gets its cuts. Regulations yea right just recently a higher up governemtn offical was executed by the chinese government because of his corruption he lead to poisoned food to be exported. If it was internal they may not have cared. The regulations were and are on the book it is just that the government is so inept that it barely inforces them in fear of a public revolt.
A few months Ago NPR was doing a report on Chinese Capitalism and interviewed an buisness owner he said the only thing the comunist government is there for is to add red tape to the process.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
...so much as crippling ourselves. The iPhone has some obvious flaws. Not engineering ones, really. Not things that couldn't've been overcome by the engineers at Apple. But things enforced by the telecoms. The phones are deliberately damaged. The Chinese ripoff is carrier independent. Allows people to write their own applications. And it's probably easier to use it like a general purpose machine, too. There is no technical reason why Apple could not do these things. But, because of corrupting influence (I suspect the pure-evil, anti-free market attitude of the telecoms), the iPhone doesn't have them. Americans are deliberately making inferior products. No wonder there are issues competing.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
It appears China is where Japan was, post-war. There is a market for the 'cheapest product possible', but personally I'd rather pay twice, say for a quality motherboard without on board "Realtek" garbage. In general all products from China seem to be a bit shoddy. Give them a few years and things may change dramatically. I'm referring to 'authorized products' here.
...
Then, what is wrong with making obvious fakes? As long as the consumer is fully aware and there is no deception, no faked trademarks, etc. What is the problem? I wouldn't drive a Chinese car quite yet or use an unapproved drug or related product, (like the toothpaste), I am certainly game to learn HOW they do it.
In yet another case, its profitable to over-produce 'authorized products' and sell them. Does it matter if your 'designer clothes' came from a fancy retailer on High Street or resold at 1/10 the price elsewhere? Remember they came from exactly the same source in this case. Hint: I'm not stupid.
People the world over tolerate Microsoft. Has Microsoft __ever__ made an original product? Isn't it strange to think about that for a second? Whats wrong with a Linux based phone that looks like the BSD based iPhone? I doesn't appear to have an 'Apple logo', something the end-user can add if it helps. Its a completely different product. Maybe it works better? Chances are it will break in half a year, but at a fraction the price: Who cares? If they've fixed the rough edges of the iPhone, like easy to change batteries, some sort of API, it may be preferable to many. The ones I've seen locally come with source and an API and cost about half the US price of iPhone, in Europe. AFAIK, it legal as long as you don't program it to do something illegal. (such as jam GPS or intercept calls that are not yours) Yes, its illegal to lock a consumer to a single provider or a single choice if more are available.
It appears today, the most profitable business plan is to base a product on an existing concept. Designing completely new products (like I do) has its challenges and risks. Usually it fails, but that one in five that wins, makes everything back and $millions more, at minimum. So China, like Japan in the 40s and 50s, is at the "Microsoft stage". Eventually they will, like Japan, think for themselves. Japanese products are quality, and China is likely to follow. There is no business plan in forever 'cloning' existing products. What if 'PC hardware' was only IBM clones? Fortunately companies do move on to survive. So do nations.
Japan was NOT ripping off. They had low costs cars that Americans were buying, but they were not rip offs. They then focused on quality. Personally, I admire the country for what they did. They pulled themselves up by their boot straps.
China is a WHOLE different matter. They are flat out stealing. But that is by design. The chinese gov pushes this and as long as American and European countries allow this, it will get worse. You are correct about complacency, but the real issue is Americans (and EUers) who accept this cheap junk. Want to stop it? Quit buying it. As of a month ago, I quit buying Fischer-price because they do not check their toys (I have a 3.5 y.o. and a 10 m.o.). For the last couple of years, I refused to buy any fish from china. I know that most of it comes from American waters, but the problem is there quality is very low.
And these days, we have to worry about espionage. On a project that I was working on, we had a "Taiwain" native who wanted to invest into the company. Most importantly, he wanted control of some hardware that we had, and wanted to sell it to mainland china. Since it was under gov. control, there was NO way to allow this. And yet, he was still looking at ways to take it to china. Another individual applied for a job with us, and her resume looked interesting until I saw that she was chinese citizenship. With that, we could not hire her. Once I explained that we were developing equipment for the DOD, NSA, and CIA and could not hire her, I started getting phone calls and emails every day. Needless to say, not a chance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I study literature, and at least in that realm copying was a two-way street. Dickens lost gobs of money to American editions of his work while Melville, Clemens, and others lost gobs to copying in England. There were no copyright agreements, so there was flagrant copying. In fact, our nations were at war with one another off and on during the nineteenth century. It might be best to not cry over spilt milk.
Say what you want, but some people can probably remember when Samsung made cheap Sony knock-offs as their line of business. Now they're innovating and many consumers (like myself) would chose a Samsung over a Sony.
How long before consumers choose iClone over iPhone?
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
and can I get a side of noodles?
I wish I was clever!
You seemingly fail to comprehend that the reason for this is that China is a terrible market for any kind of disposable spending because its people are for the most part extremely poor.
It's not that it'll get stolen---it just won't sell.
-=rsw
how about PCB's?
Is this just another delivery vehicle for poison? another method China is going to use to aff load their toxic waste on other locations?
Was the assembler a 4 or 5 year old? were they whipped or beaten to meet their quota?
are the knobs make from endangered shark fin?
Is the default background screen a shot of the massacre at Tienemen?
just curious about yet another thing we're supposed to be impressed with the chinese for. nothing to see here, move along.
I live on the small Northern European island. Maybe this is because of the "special relationship" but I feel sad about what is happening to the US. They genuinely saved the day in WW2 and they've been trying to recapture that moment of glory ever since. Some of their efforts have been successful but several high profile failures have cost them their reputation, as well as a great deal of money.
For all their failings, I believe that the things the US ostensibly stands for - liberty, equality and the belief that you can achieve anything if you work for it - are a good role model for the world. I feel a little nervous about a world where the US has allowed stupid leaders to bleed away all their power and we have to find another buttress against the casual cruelty of China and a resurgent Russia.
Peter
Let's just say you shouldn't bet your life on that. Nobody I know of in Beijing (my wife is from there, I've been twice) drinks tap water, filtered or not, without boiling it first. As for the filtering, there's filtering, and then there's filtering. For one thing, tap water would have to be filtered at least lightly to pass it off as bottled, since the water coming from the tap has heavy white sediment in it. Seriously, pour a glass from the tap, and just wait - you'll literally see the sediment settling to the bottom. So you would have to filter that out. But filtered for *safety*? Nah, that would take effort, and cut into the fakers' profits. My inlaws have passed on stories from CCTV about bootleg bottled water; it's relatively well known that you have to be careful about it.
Americans used to "pirate" Gilbert and Sullivan shows back when they were popular. Now that Americans are net exporters of IP rather than importers, the tune has changed.
I think you should all pay Newton $5 every time an engineer usesF=ma. Bah!
This is all just my personal opinion.
Since this phone is not the same as the iPhone, has different code, mmore functionality, how are these Chinese "pirates"?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Apple may rue the day they decided to delay the iPhone in markets other then the USA. By the time they make it th Europe and Asia, those markets might already be saturated.
Have gnu, will travel.
labor and demand a higher salary.
But that is China's situation and is rapidly becoming the case in the west.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
What... I'd buy one!
Keep passing the open windows...
Actually none of them lost any money at all in the process. They simply failed to make money that they (felt they) were entitled to.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Anyway compare China to India, right next door. It's a very large market, but only 60% the size of China's. People are much, much poorer, believe me it's not like China where every urban motherfucker sports a $200+ cell phone. And yet India, with stronger IP laws than China, has a vibrant film and cultural industry, a fairly large (and rapidly growing) skilled labor pool, and can actually support locally-oriented industries.
Obviously that's a simplified breakdown - but saying "all 1.4 billion Chinese people are poor and could never afford to buy anything that isn't a bootleg" is even simpler, to the point of being nonsense.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It's basically decimated the local film industry - China should be a huge market, but basically it's ignored even by local filmmakers, who aim themselves at foreign audiences - hence all those lame Westernish Kung-Fu movies from Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. This is also true in Hong Kong, which has a history of excellence and two of the greatest directors in the world, Wong Kar Wai and Johnny To, who now rely on non-Chinese audiences or even have turned to making American movies. ...
Local musicians aren't able to sell their CDs. Anything popular from local bands will be sold on the street for maybe fifty cents. There is basically no music scene in China, everything is bootlegged from Hong Kong or Taiwan or the US.
Wrong. Entertainment is a luxury. It's a luxury very few people in mainland China can afford. Most people are too busy trying to make a living to spend money on entertainment like music or movies. Thus, the market for such things is nowhere near as large as you're imagining. The pirate market isn't targetted at Chinese people in China. They're targetting people who can afford these luxuries, namely, Chinese people in the west.
That's why big-budgeted movies are aimed at a primarily western audience. But that isn't true either. There is a thriving entertainment industry in Hong Kong with music and movies for Chinese audiences, despite the rampant piracy from the mainland. The directors and actors you mentioned are the ones trying to break into a larger audience, not because they can't make money off of the Chinese audience (plenty of others do), but because the western market is so much bigger. Comparing the 10-15 million people in HK and overseas with the 200 million people in the US alone and you can see the difference in market size, no mention of the rest of the western world. And because they can make movies western audiences can watch without getting completely lost in the cultural references, they will try for that market.
Chinese manufacturers have to aim at the foreign market from day 1. Any successful product will be immediately copied by Chinese cut-rate manufacturers. It is economically infeasible to design a product for the Chinese market.
Wrong again. There are plenty of chinese manufacturers designing for the Chinese market. You might have even heard of some of them, as some of these brands have made it to the US. Many of these brands began in China selling to a primarily Chinese market. Many of these brands were once available outside of China only through the gray market. More recently, these smaller brands have been selling to an international customer base over the internet.
Imitations also are often of a much lower quality. Bootleg bottled water in Beijing was recently revealed to often be fake, using filtered Beijing tap water (you wouldn't want to drink it).
Dasani in Great Britain was recently found to be just filtered water from the Thames. Most bottled waters are just filtered tap water, if that much. If you've got some romantic notion that bottled water actually comes from a glacier or some natural spring, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Goods in China are marginally cheaper, but it's at the expense of shoddy products that are often of a lower quality, and of a moribund IP development, and a lack of locally produced culture. There is no motivation to doing work or putting expense into research, if there's no economic reward - and there's no economic reward when your ideas are ripped off immediately.
Ok, there are three major points to address here. First, it is true that knockoff goods in China are much cheaper, and the quality of the material may be lower than the real thing, but the manufacturing process is the same, since everything is made in China anyway. For some things, there is no difference in material, so there's no difference in quality between the Chinese knockoff and the real thing.
Second, there's 5 thousand
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."