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iPhones Produced in China Smuggled Right Back in
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Factories in China produce iPhones that are exported to the United States and Europe and then smuggled right back in helping explain why Apple says it sold about 3.7 million iPhones last year while only 2.3 million are actually registered in the United States and Europe. For Apple, the booming overseas market for iPhones is a sign of its marketing prowess but also a blow to Apple's business model, costing the company as much as $1 billion over the next three years, according to some analysts. Since negotiations between Apple and China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile-phone service operator with more than 350 million subscribers, broke down last month, the official release of the iPhone in China has been stalled producing a thriving gray market. Copycat models are another possible threat to Apple in China. Not long after the iPhone was released, research and development teams in China were taking it apart, trying to copy or steal the design and software for use in iPhone knockoffs, or iClones and some people who have used the clones say they are sophisticated and have many functions that mimic the iPhone. "A lot of people here want to get an iPhone," says Shanghai lawyer Conlyn Chan."
People in China are going to satisfy their demand for iphones one way or another. Not to bother with the ethics of the situation, but much like any other type of piracy, this is just a market at work. We truly live in a global economy now. Regional releases and other such nonsense just don't make sense any more. If you release a product with global demand, make sure you can supply it globally or it will be pirated, smuggled, etc. If Apple cares at all about the Chinese market, then they need to ink a deal fast, because someone will supply iphones in their stead if they don't get something done.
I got a catholic block.
Can't say I'm all that surprised about the phones being used in China or the copycats. I guess with one of the world's largest markets, there's going to be a healthy "grey" market too.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
Basically this "funny math" is saying: "We get $X from phone sale, plus $Y from the carrier deal. We expect to sell 1M phones, which means (X+Y)*1M $. We noticed that we actually sold 2M phones! Yay! But then we noticed that only half of those phones actually signed up for plans."
So they now claim that they have lost Y*1M $ because people didn't sign up.... umm... no. You made an additional X*1M $. That is not a loss. That is a profit.
"Costing" indeed.
Sure, and with China's well documented tendencies towards theft of intellectual property, no one should be surprised.
What we should be doing here in the US, though, is everything we can to discourage use of Chinese products. There's no need to give China all our wealth and in the process create a powerful competitor. Problem is, we're already there...now it's time for damage control. The one good thing about a weak dollar policy is it will help.
Good thing we have a big crop of American scientists and engineers to compete into the future! Oh, wait...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Sure, and with China's well documented tendencies towards theft of intellectual property, no one should be surprised.
Going with the Slashdot meme here, it's not theft because they haven't taken it away from you - you *still* have your IP.
But then I guess that it's only when $BIGFACELESSCORPORATION is complaining about you downloading their products in violation of US copyright law that such semantics come into play.
When another country is getting competitive against the US they *must* be *stealing* your ideas!
Perhaps, but you don't hear people whining about cheap westrn-European knockoffs, or mid-western-American knockoffs much.
The Chinese make cheap goods:
1) People like to buy cheap goods
There, fixed that for you.
Capitalism/The Market is to blame. People want to buy commodity goods (virtually everything these days) as cheaply as possible.
Perhaps, but you don't hear people whining about cheap westrn-European knockoffs, or mid-western-American knockoffs much.
Mainly because not much in those regions is cheap, and trademark & copyright laws are enforced against commercial entities that would try to make those knockoffs. China, Taiwan and such may have laws but the enforcement is quite lax.