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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.
If you do not want people to copy your product then do not have them made in China.
Recently I've found some iPod Nano knockoffs. These devices look good. They copy the Nano right
down to the nice plastic case that if it in on the shelf. The only difference is that these
devices do not have the feature where you can move your finger across the dial and they do not
have Apple's software. They are easy to use and cost less than $50 for a 4GB model. I've not
bought one yet. I have a 20GB iPod and it still works for me. When it breaks I'm buying a clone!
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
If you notice, we haven't heard ANYTHING from Apple. Apple looks like they are preventing this, because why would AT&T give them a cut if everyone else can carry the iPhone with unlocked iPhones. Apple seems to enjoy the extra sales and profits, but doesn't want to jeopardize the AT&T gravy train.
The funny math comes from business reporters/analysts that have been trained by this given the Record Labels/Movie Studios, as you pointed out. Also, it does matter to business analysts, because they are trying to project Apple profits. If you priced all iPhone sales as the deferred revenue model, you would be overstating future sales/profits. You need to know how many are "lost" to back them out of projections.
The loss is also probably more an accounting/spreadsheet thing.
If your estimate is $300 in profit from iPhone over 3 years, your line is probably:
If you estimate 1m/year
Year 1: $100m, Year 2: $200m, Year 3: $300m, Year 4: $300m, (and $300m in perpetuity)
Now, if you need to adjust that in future years, your choices are, recalculate and estimate new sales vs. unlocked sales. Or, put in a line under there: Loss from unregistered phones. The latter is easier, and looks more like an income statement's bad debt expense.
Bad debt expense is booked as an expense and a loss. However, for a company with virtual sales (software), obviously it's not really an expense. Producing the item cost you zero marginal costs, so if you don't get paid, you're no worse off than if you didn't make the sale. However, accounting treatment requires you to book the sales and then book the estimated losses from bad debts as a percentage, rather than incurring as you go.
For a small business, you might just not spend the cash until the credit card/check payment clears, but bigger businesses need to worry about GAAP compliance, and it's really important that revenue/costs are booked in the period that they occur, not when the cash clears.
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!
Company A from America contracts with Company C in China to build product I.
Company A orders 100,000 I's every month.
Company C builds 120,000 I's every month.
Company C ships 100,000 I's to company A.
Company C sells the other 20,000 I's domestically at a higher profit.
Happens all the time. That's how most IP/knockoffs in China come about. Same product line, same product, they just build a few extra (at their cost, their customers know what the BOM is, and can quickly figure out overcharges) and sell them locally for more profit.
The key to keeping IP "protected" in China is to partner with a strong Chinese manufacturer and give them financial incentives to police the market for you. It's what I do with my IP; I have two "blessed" factories in China authorized to build with it, and they get to maintain that "blessed" status as long as:
1. The products they build meet quality standards
2. The products they build meet typical BOM and profit margin costs
3. They monitor and police the Chinese market for me to watch for knock-offs
The carrot? They get a virtual "lock in" of clients. They get to charge a few percent more profit because my IP carries a premium.
The stick? They would lose the lock in, and either lose their "blessed" status or end up having two, three, or a dozen more factories so blessed and then lose their premium profit.
The key to China is pretty simple - make it worth their while to do the policing for you. It's all about the RMB, folks...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Apple always known about the gray market, Apple always supported the gray market, Apple always whined about the gray market. The truth is they always wanted and needed all the incremental revenue they could get. On the front end I remember them going out to the gray resellers and collecting serial numbers swearing they will get to the bottom of their source. On the back end they continued to pump millions of MDF dollars into known gray resellers to subsidise their low margins and to encourage them to keep up the volume. With the dollar being low and economy sucking eggs at home they are happy to offload as many units overseas with or without subscriptions. This gets rid of inventories that they will eventually have to price-protect at disti or super-retailer levels, and frees up purchasers to buy the new better/bigger products. The Spice Must Flow.
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.
There's never been any negotiations between Apple and China Mobile. Needless to say, they have never broken down, since there was nothing to break down.
Both lies were nothing more than another drops in the long stream of manipulative misinformation about Apple concocted by stock market criminals. Steve Jobs clearly debunked these rumors, but apparently, after waiting for a short while, the criminals are trying to milk this cow again.