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Knock-Off Apple Watches Hit the Chinese Market Less Than 24 Hours After Launch
schwit1 writes Fake versions of the Apple Watch can be bought for as little as £25 — despite the fact the real thing will set you back more than 10 times that. The flagship new product was only launched in San Francisco yesterday but knock-offs are already available in China. According to CNN Money, they can be found at Huaqiangbei electronics market in the southern city of Shenzhen, and others are being sold nationwide via popular e-commerce websites. Right down to the digital crown, the fakes mimic the design and style of Apple's new offering.
I can't wait to get one of these newfangled Crapple iSpy watches. I wonder if they even connect to smartphones.
But the important question - Do they work?
...Because a sub-$100 knock-off counts as the only way I'll ever try one.
Yes, since the design of the fakes doesn't match that of the real ones. They are just close copies.
This is one of the "hidden" costs of doing business in China. You can pretty much count on the theft and exploitation of your designs. How dare they exploit us back!
However, given the fact that this is a luxury good and status symbol, I don't think Apple is too worried about this, except if consumers are fooled into buying one. No one wants to show off a knock-off status symbol. It defeats the entire purpose.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Took them long enough!
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In this case, yes. These fakes don't have the same components or run the same software as the real ones. They merely aped the design of the enclosure.
The joke is, most folks who are willing to spend $10,000 for watch won't be able to tell the fake ones from the real ones.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
They definitely do not. Apple is a huge customer. Just, startlingly huge. I once spoke to an Apple guy at a trade show. He wanted to know if our company could produce enough machines to assemble a part that they were musing about. We are the largest manufacturer in the world of the equipment that we make - something like 70% market share. I kind of laughed at first, since I figured there was no way they would tax our capacity. Then we started talking numbers, and it quickly became clear that we would have to resort to extraordinary measures to have any chance at meeting their demand. They are a massive operation, and if you are a vendor of theirs you don't need to share factory floor space with other customers - and certainly not knock offs of their products.
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What will they think of next--fake Rolex watches? Fake Oakley sunglasses? I'm shocked--SHOCKED--by this most recent development.
Wow, 24 hours after launch? That's AMAZING! That is, if you ignore the fact that precise measurements and high-res images of the real thing have been online for months at apple.com... but other than that, yeah, quite a feat.
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Gold-pressed lead... that's from the Bizarro Star Trek Universe, right?
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They are a massive operation, and if you are a vendor of theirs you don't need to share factory floor space with other customers - and certainly not knock offs of their products.
The problem is that you knock a lot of other customers out of the way to take care of Apple, and they become your only huge customer. Then they pull the rug out from you and your left with no customers.
I can't tell the difference between a bar of gold, and a bar of gold hollowed out and filled with lead*.
Archimedes sorted that problem years ago.
Chinese manufacturing is also unimaginably huge. Foxconn manufactures Apple's iPhones and iPads, but they also manufacture Kindles, PS4s, XB1s, and Wii Us. If you think about the capacity they must need to meet peak demand for new iPhone models, they most certainly share factory floor space during off-peak seasons. Many companies have been ruined by overramping their capacity and workforce to meet peak demand and then facing the music when the expected orders don't continue to roll in. Smart companies don't put all their eggs in one basket.
You need to study some basic economic concepts.
The WORTH of something is (correctly and with good reason) completely decoupled from the amount of money it COSTS to make.
The worth of something is how much the consumer is defined as the maximum he/she is willing to pay, according to the benefits he/she subjectively feels he/she the purchase would yield
Those subjective benefits can be in regards to the technical merits, the the aesthetic appeal, an irrational emotional response, or anything else. The PRICE is determined by government regulations interacting with market forces like competition, marketing. At the end of the day, the correct price is the one that makes the seller the most money. Competition would hopefully reduce this to something fair to the consumer.
The only time production cost becomes relevant is if the revenue doesn't lead to enough profits, because the market won't bear high enough prices.
At this point the company stops making the product.
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So, bear with me here. The Apple watch is manufactured and assembled in China, except for the solid gold ones, which (I've read, but it hasn't been substantiated) have guts made in China but the final assembly is in the US to avoid shipping gold to China to be made into watch cases. Or something like that.
So, let's assume for the moment that (at least) all the consumer grade Apple watches and all the guts are made in China. We also know that China companies in general have ... different ... ideas about intellectual property.
And so, anyone who is surprised that "knock-offs" start appearing nearly simultaneously with launch, should be beaten with a switch and made to sit in the corner. Hell, the "knock-offs" could have been made at the same factory.
Funny story -- I'm a photographer, and the brand I use (which will remain nameless) demands premium prices for official accessories, which are often just pieces of plastic with a certain shape and a few basic electronics. Almost immediately after a new product is introduced, a shower of "knock-off" accessories appear, which are often indistinguishable from the official parts. The story is, they're identical because they're a covert run from the same factory, merely with different branding and perhaps not as fastidious quality control. (Or, at least, that last part is what the vendor wants you to believe.) And so an official battery grip may list for $300, street cost $255, and the knock-offs are not more than $50, look and behave identically, and appear to last as long even under rough use. (And you don't mind being rough with them because if they break, you can get another for $50.) However, there will always be (brand name) affectionados who will sneer at your $50 part with "you get what you pay for", even in the face of contradictory evidence.
And of course, as no true Apple enthusiast at least in this country would dream of wearing a knock-off, even were it electrically and visually identical, Apple will still make a bazillion dollars off the product.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I know someone who has bought a number of "Rolex" and other expensive watches in China. These aren't the really cheap knock-offs and they're actually of decent quality and keep excellent time. One of my cousins has a real Rolex watch. We put them side by side and it was impossible to tell them apart, right down to the hologram on the back. Of course they were different when you opened them up, but the works in these fake watches were often made in Switzerland or Germany just like the real watches. The writing on the inside of the back of the case also made it obvious that these were fake and this appears to be intentional. From the outside, however, everything seems to be the same, even the smooth movement of the second hand.
Now with the iWatch it should be fairly obvious since they run different operating systems, though I suppose it's possible for a cloned watch to also be able to run iOS just like the real one.
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At some point, being too dependant on one huge customer is only barely different from being owned by the customer. The difference being is that the customer takes none of the risk, but gets all the benefits. The customer can even leverage their position of power over the company to renegotiate deals, dictate terms, meddle with the internal affairs of the company, and other such abuses. And as the article shows, some huge customers do not give a damn about what will happen when (not if) they eventually dump a company.
Actually, they are tungsten bars, specially made and coated with gold. No lead.
Federal reserve bought hundreds of thousends of tungsten bars during Clinton precidency times. Years ago there was a big "ruckus" between China and US, becouce chinese were not trusting the fort knox chipment og gold bars and tested all the bars. They all were fake bars, no gold only gold coated tungsten.
In October 2009, China reportedly received a large shipment of gold, containing some 6,000 bars, weighing 400 ounces each. When it was received, the Chinese government asked that tests be performed to guarantee the purity and weight of the gold bars. In this test, four small holes were drilled into the bars, and the metal was analyzed. Officials were shocked to find the bars were bogus. They contained cores of tungsten, with only an outer coating of real gold. What’s more, these gold bars, containing serial numbers for tracking, originated in the United States and had reportedly been stored in Fort Knox for years.
Tungsten is vastly cheaper than gold—maybe $30 dollars a pound, compared to $1,200 an ounce for gold right now. It has exactly the same density as gold, to three decimal places. Therefore, it has to be drilled to detect the fraud. The only differences are that it’s the wrong color, and that it’s much harder than gold. Pure gold is soft and can be dented with a fingernail.
At first, many gold experts speculated that the fake gold must have originated in China, which is considered the world’s best knock-off producers. However, the Chinese government investigated and issued a statement pointing a finger squarely at the United States.
The Chinese claim that in 1995—during the Clinton administration (Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers)—between 1.3 million and 1.5 million 400-ounce tungsten blanks were manufactured by a sophisticated refiner in the United States, amounting to more than 16,000 metric tons. Some 640,000 of these tungsten blanks were then gold plated and shipped to Fort Knox, according to the Chinese, where they are said to remain to this day. The Chinese contend that the remaining collection of these 400-ounce fakes was eventually gold-plated and then “sold” into international markets.
The global market is literally “stuffed full of 400 ounce salted bars,” said one unnamed expert. “It’s enough to destroy the world markets.”