Shanzhai scored gold at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics

Alibaba news has done a little piece on the shanzhai phone phenomena. Regular readers of this site won’t learn much new there but it did point out some interesting info about what happens to people who buy shanzai products who are unaware of what they’re dealing with. That doesn’t happen often on a day to day basis with local, well informed Chinese customers… but add in a kabillion unwitting foreign visitors during an international event like the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and the shanzhai product distributors were in their own little version of shanzhai retail paradise.

First off these buyers didn’t realize they are buying a copycat item when purchasing things like iFauxne’s. Second (due to the first issue) they bargained for pricing based around their understanding of the cost of what the real items go for… ouch!

"Some managed to bargain (my phones) down to 1,500 yuan ($219.73) from my quotation of 3,000 yuan ($439.46), about the price for a genuine iPhone," Wang said.

These foreign Apple fans did not know what they bought were copycat handsets, Wang said.

The average price of the best copycat iPhone, for Chinese buyers, is around 1,000 yuan ($146.49) in Zhongguancun, which "only real professionals can distinguish from genuine ones," said Wang, a phone dealer in his mid 20s.-Source

I’m not sure you’d have to be a “professional” iPhone fan to notice the difference (especially in 2008), when all you would have to do is click on almost any of the Apple icons on the device to take you to that hideous second layer of the UI that exposes Windows CE. However I guess if you had never actually played with an iPhone or smartphone before you might not have known what to look for.

The shanzhai phenomena today is a quite more international and publicly known issue, so its unlikely shanzhai vendors will see those halcyon days again. Ironically, despite the fact that a shanzhai phone (particularly iPhone clones) are probably 10 times better quality than they were even 2 short years ago.

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