The Shanzhai Culture

What is the notorious “Shanzhai” culture? The term originally meant “a mountain fastness,” and was used to refer to bandit strongholds beyond government control. Now it is the name  for fake and pirated electronics and other commodities. Now the implication of Shanzhai has enriched and becomes a flourished culture.

In China there is not only Iphone, there are also 1Phone and Hiphone. Not only fake products, there are many Shanzhai phones  amazing and eye-catching features and innovations, one of the famous one is allowing two SIM cards to be simultaneously inserted in one phone with both in standby mode. This feature is very appreciated in many countries. Like in India, there are many mobile network operators; consumers can with such phones the benefit of different providers combine

Other features include high battery capacity, multimedia player, and high-quality built-in cameras.

There are some examples of features invented by the Chinese Shanzhai phonemakers.

• Cellphone with shave,
• Cellphone with ligher,
• Cellphone with WII controller
• Cellphone with projecter

Usually, the Shanzhai phonemakers are very small, but some could make to grow big gradually, like K-touch, Gionlee, Gaoxinqin. and CKing. Acutally these makers are not Shangzhai any more.

But the question is why the Chinese companies have the ability to produce the knock-off phones? Some fake phones even announce they could fulfill 99% functions of original phone. Where does the technology come from?

To get the answer, we have to mention a cell phone chip company based in Taiwan, in 2006, the company MediaTek in Taiwan launched a powerful chip with an all-in-one MTK solution, which integrates the cell phone’s mainboards and software, the core technology that makes up a cell phone. The chip then works as a semi-manufactured product, possessing every possible function one can imagine, including music, video, a camera, games, Java and a touch screen.

The meaning of the MTK solution is first, the development circle is significantly shortend, which means the Shanzhan producers can put their products in market much quicker as other big manufactures. Shanzhai makers can quickly capture the changing of consumer tastes and needs; second the developing cost is rapidly reduced.  With the help of MTK solution, the Shanzhai cell phone producers just need very little investment for manufacturing and development. As we observe, the market share of NOKIA has dropped a lot in many countries.

The value of Shanzhai lies in breaking the monopolies held by expensive products and encouraging grassroots innovation. The consumers could benefit from Shanzhai through the low price and rich features. Now Chinese government has launched many programs to allowing the Shanzhai enterprises to turn “regular army.”  We could expect that the quality of Chinese phones will improve day by day. Around 150 million Shanzhai cell phones were reportedly sold in 2007, giving them a 30-percent market niche. Moreover, about 40 percent of the phones were exported, primarily to South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe, with some exports to Africa, Western Europe and the United States.

For consumers, it is important to be aware there is a big range of the quality of Chinese products. It is always meaningful to conduct a research before buying.

If you would like to buy phones, you could consider the following brands: Meizu, CECT, Gioleen, Gaoxinqi, K-Touch.

Or you could buy phones in Chinavasion, all the phones in Chinavasion has no brand, but the quality and grantee is provided by chinavasion.com.

Other sites like www.ligtinthebox.com and www.dealextreme.com are also possible places to buy Chinese phones.