Stop the press! Although also iClones (fake iPhones) exit China to Europe and the US, read here, also genuine iPods manufactured in China for/by Apple are exported abroad. There is a lack of the real thing in China, so the price people want to pay for it rises. Enter smugglers of genuine iPhones, that bring these products back to China.Mr David Barboza wrote the interesting article: "After China Ships Out iPhones, Smugglers Make It a Return Trip" for the New York Times about counterfeits, genuine products and the so called grey market of parallel import, although one would mention parallel import most of the time in case of cheaper products entering a market. Read Mr Barboza's story here.
Paul Midler of The China Game, has an elaborate two part series about Apple in China. Part 1 is "Apple takes an unfair beating on iPhone", read here.
Tony, who commented on China Law Blog on the misconceptions about China's IP enforcement Catherine Sun debunked in a video presentation, see here, pointed to an article of Mr Patrick Mannion on EETimes about iClones that are better than iPhones, read 'Under the Hood-Video: iPhone clones surpassing original' here.
1 comment:
I see this hacking of software and counter-feiting of goods as a pretty much natural reaction from consumers to the way in which Apple have tried to maximise their profits through exclusive licenses and refusal to supply IP. The same things that allow Foxconn to make the iPhone for a unit price of about 80-something dollars and Apple then sell it on for five times that price are also turning consumers against what is an obvious attempt to milk them for as much as it's worth whilst the going's still good. Even if the current standards used to judge a refusal to supply IP as an abuse of a dominant position under article 82 here in Europe (i.e., using IP in a primary market to prevent a new competitor's product entering a secondary market)might not be applicable to Apple right now, any major distortion/monopolisation in the market will bring a revision of those standards pretty quickly.
Post a Comment