Inside Shenzen's Grey-Market iPhone Mall

jfruh writes Despite being largely manufactured in China, iPhones are still too expensive for most Chinese to afford — new ones, anyway. That's why thousands come to a bustling marketplace in Shenzen that specializes in older grey-market iPhones. Many of them are damaged phones that have been refurbished by enterprising merchants. From the story: "Reselling iPhones can be a lucrative business. The Shenzen mall, called Open World Communication City, is based in the Huaqiangbei district, which attracts buyers from around the world who come here to shop for cheap devices and components. But some of the business is shady. Earlier this year, a person who claimed to have worked at the mall posted pictures online showing how dealers can refurbish an iPhone 5 to make it look like an 5s."

Comments

Repair

[pr0nbot]

It was like this in the Tepito market in Mexico City in the 80s... as well as all the refurbished and stolen goods, if you had a broken walkman or whatever, there'd be some guy who could fix it for you. I miss the culture of repair.

Re:Repair

[Sockatume]

The price of smartphones seem to have revived that culture to an extent here in the UK; phone repair shops started springing up like crazy by 2009 and now even my local cobbler has staff trained to do simple phone jobs. Most of the standalone places do PC and console repair, and customisations too. Admittedly, my handset came back from the cobbler scratched on the inside of the glass and with bits of leather and boot polish stuck in the corners, but you can't argue with a £15 fix over a £150 Apple Store replacement.

And yet, I have to ask around a bunch to find a guy that does professional-grade tool-sharpening. Go figure.

Part of the defamed "e-waste" culture

[retroworks]

Have been to these markets in Shenzhen and Foshan, and to similar marketplaces in Cairo and Lima and Jakarta. In Chinese there is a word "shenzhai" I think which means to "hack" or copy, but it doesn't have the nefarious English connotations. It's more like a musician jamming someone else's guitar riff, it's seen as a talent worthy of applause. Slate had a great article in 2012, "The Chinese Steve Jobs is Probably a Pirate". I'm now working with 3 researchers at universities to document what we call the "Tinkerer Blessing", which is the opposite of the "Resource Curse"... correlating that emerging markets with a lack of natural resources develop better through technology repair and "grey market" activity. Simon Lin of Acer, Terry Gou of Foxconn, both started in video display refurbishment, by the way. http://www.slate.com/articles/...