Bunnie Huang on China's "Shanzai" Mash-Up Design Shops

saccade.com writes "Bunnie (of XBox hacking and Chumby fame) has written an insightful post about how a new phenomena emerging out of China called 'Shanzai' has impacted the electronics business there. A new class of innovators, they're going beyond merely copying western designs to producing electronic "mash-ups" to create new products. Bootstrapped on small amounts of capital, they range from shops of just a few people to a few hundred. They rapidly create new products, and use an "open source" style design community where design ideas and component lists are shared."

Comments

Shanzhai, not Shanzai

[jsse]

Literally 'Shanzhai' means a fortress on a mountain in Chinese, but it's a equivalent to 'garage' in western terms of innovation process. Both means making things at low cost, labour intensive environment, but doesn't necessarily refer to making things in a real garage or a actual mountain fortress.

Often case the term 'Shanzhai' production implies 'cheap and dirty, but work'. Say, we procure electronic parts from a 'Shanzhai' factory, we expect them to be cheap but not with very high quality.

SShan zhai bandit phones and popular youth culture

[BananaPeel]

For those intereseted there is small write up with a few pics on the cultural aspects of Shan zhai on:
http://chinayouthology.com/blog/?p=369

Talking to friends in China last week "Shan zhai" anything is a hot word in china now, being applied to mobile phone, fashion, whatever.

While I was there I offered over half a dozen iphone look alikes which can be bought from around 1000 yuan (~£110)

SMALL-amount manufacturing exists

[KlaymenDK]

There are already a number of small-amount manufacturers, as you call them. Some are prototyping shops, some will build any number of items for you.

http://www.emachineshop.com/
http://www.tapplastics.com/
http://www.pad2pad.com/
http://www.olimex.com/
http://www.eurocircuits.com/
(no affiliation to any of them)

But you have to supply a sellable idea that's not been done yet, and bear the cost of iterating the bugs out of the design.

Also, and more to the point, the burden of IP is on your shoulders; at least, they're just punching out parts on your behalf and AFAIK that's not been contested in court as of yet.

Re:Smart; Very smart

[Hal_Porter]

Several thoughts;

1. Our IP is getting in our way. That is why our forefathers created SHORT TERM IP rights. Now, it is just a money maker for a bit longer, but is KILLING the west.

IP rights have their uses. I happen to know that China has cloned processors and that are unlicensed. Inside China anything you buy will use one of those. For the export market Chinese companies have to import legal components from somone who has a license. So if you work for US processor manufacturer for example, IP law is protecting your job. I suspect that if you have an engineering job in a rich country, IP licensing is one of the things that pays your salary.