One in Five Mobile Phones Shipped Abroad Are Phoney (theregister.co.uk)

Nearly one-fifth of mobile phones and one-quarter of video game consoles shipped abroad are fake, according to a report by the the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Register adds: The Trade in Counterfeit ICT Goods report, published ahead of the 2017 OECD Global Anti-Corruption and Integrity Forum this month, identified a growing trend in fake goods. Smartphone batteries, chargers, memory cards, magnetic stripe cards, solid state drives and music players are also increasingly falling prey to counterfeiters. On average, 6.5 per cent of global trade in ICT goods is in counterfeit products, according to analysis of 2013 customs data, that is up from 2.5 per cent of overall traded goods found to be fake in a 2016 report. China is the primary source of fake ICT goods, and US manufacturers are the worst affected by lost revenue and erosion of brand value, the report said. Almost 43 per cent of seized fake ICT goods infringe the IP rights of US firms, followed by 25 per cent for Finnish firms and 12 per cent for Japanese firms.

Comments

I'm surprised that it's only 20%

[mykepredko]

When I was at RIM a few years ago, I was amazed at the number of different infringing products that came in through active searches of problem products.

In terms of handsets, they ranged from cheap look alikes to incredibly similar "Blueberry" products (seriously, that was the name stamped with the RIM logo on the phone). For accessories (the group I was in), batteries, headphones marked as RIM products ranged from very good to better than the company was producing. There were some proprietary features (ie recognition circuitry) that should have been proprietary that were very expertly faked.

I don't know how a global brand can combat this (and I'd be curious to see any ideas on how it could be done).