Tech Trend: Shanzhai (2009)

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284

by 10000truths • 2 years ago

48 42 2 years ago

kelnos• 2 years ago

Curious what a 2024 update would be to this article, 15 years later. Is the shanzai movement still in full force? Has it gotten larger? Smaller? Is it just not a thing anymore? Have former shanzai groups gone on to become larger, successful companies (and thus can't be called shanzai anymore)?

Admittedly I don't know anything about this beyond OP's 15-year-old blog post.

colordrops• 2 years ago

Buying almost anything on Amazon makes it clear that shanzhai products are basically the norm rather than an exception these days.

stefan_• 2 years ago

With Chinese-made electric cars shipping all over the world, it feels like we are well into the end stages of shanzai.

tslmy5• 2 years ago

Mainland-born Chinese here.

Xiaomi basically killed Shanzhai smartphones (the sector of all Shanzhai techs chosen by the OP) by releasing Xiaomi (and later Redmi) smartphones.

Xiaomi made Android smartphones affordable. How affordable? Here's a clip of the debut event of Xiaomi's first smartphone back in 2011:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Xx411v7XX/

Scrub to 01:54. That's a table of the flagship smartphones at that time. The last column of the table is the price in CNY. 3k, 4k, 5k -- around that range.

Now scrub to 03:20 where their CEO announced the MSRP. Listen to that 30-second-long "wow". Look at that price. The astonishment was real.

That's the price range of Shanzhai smartphones.

On a flagship-spec'd smartphone.

That's monumental in the history of smartphone evolution in China. Ask any friend of yours born & raised in mainland China. I bet none would argue otherwise.

---

Disclaimer: I moved to the US in 2017, and my experience since then with tech trends in China has been scarce.

seanmcdirmid5• 2 years ago

The Shanzhai movement was also mostly based on pirated WinCE and the MediaTek all in one chip. After that became outdated (Android replaced WinCE, MediaTek lots its commodity advantage), they really didn't have much of a chance (I don't remember seeing many Android Shanzhai phones, but then I wasn't really paying attention back then).

A lot of the design team (almost all Chinese) I worked with at Microsoft China 07-09 moved over to Xiaomi to help found their UX design team (I see one is now a UX director at xiaomi, he was an intern in 2007), which I found pretty cool. They had previously done a lot of Windows Mobile work, and were really committed to trying out some of their wilder designs.

AlchemistCamp• 2 years ago

I didn't grow up in China, but had a Redmi 3 several years ago and can attest that the price was just too good to beat. Unlike the phone I bought in China back in 2011, the Redmi had a nice UI and felt like the closest thing to an iPhone of any Android I'd used at that point.

cyp0633• 2 years ago

Shanzhai AirPods Pro copies the look from Apple, has working noise cancellation, and even has a pop-up pairing window on iPhone, and all those cost less than 200 CNY (30 USD). It used to be a popular choice among people who want AirPods-like earphones, and some may use it for fraud (it looks identical to an authentic one).

lukasb• 2 years ago

Huh. So they’re impersonating real AirPods to get the pairing pop-up?

xwolfi• 2 years ago

Well from here in Hong Kong, it still seems well alive: we still see improving knock-offs year on year of US-designed stuff, I got the habit to go to stores, take a pic, get it auto detected in Taobao and pay 10% of the brand price for an exact copy from Shenzhen that seems to work just as well, not question asked.

What I love is how we can get iphones or other apple stuff repaired within the hour for 10 USD at random street shops, sometimes a small walk away from flagship Apple stores that charge hundreds of dollars for someth that doesnt seem to be sourced differently or at least works just as well.

I dont know how people can live in trademark-enforcing countries now. But maybe it wouldnt scale if no design could be profitable middle-term ?

As a side note, I got a huawei phone recently and I couldnt believe how good it was compared to an iphone: it last longer, it has way more features that even Android takes time to copy back and it looks very premium. I got some friends almost envious until I confess all the hoops I had to go through to get Google stuff working: that stung.

JustinGoldberg95• 2 years ago

nice, did you root it or track down a working gapps installer?

JustinGoldberg95• 2 years ago

This suggests that it they did not survive:

https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/global-social-media/2015/05/06/chine...

It's a shame because we still don't have innovations like TV tuners, am/fm (my LG L70 had an FM-only tuner), or pseudo 7.1 surround sound. Well, we do have surround plugins for Android, but they require root and installing an Xposed module.

JustinGoldberg95• 2 years ago

There are some unique things on aliexpress. amazon basics is just clone stuff.

barnabyjones• 2 years ago

I think the clever ones learned a while back that market research is more important than R&D, so now they make trending products like mini sticker printers, battery packs and Stanley knock offs.

tenlp• 2 years ago

Nowadays in China, I rarely hear this word, maybe since 2015, as the industry transforms and encourages innovation,more and more high value-added products are flooding the copycat products

bunnie• 2 years ago

I think the term has evolved on an arc similar to how the term 'hacker' evolved from the 1960's until now - from curiosity, to derogatory, to underdog, to cultural phenomenon, to a category label that is used and misused as a matter of convenience. Each step the exact meaning and spirit changed. I agree it's not as common in use today, but I hear it mentioned with a wink and a nudge to describe... something in between an attitude and a policy. For example, a few years back I was talking with someone about the policy initiative to promote EV research and development. The term 'shanzhai' was descriptively applied to the desired outcome of the policy and the types of players who would see it through, and the nature of the market strategy. Everyone nodded in understanding, even though it was clear the usage wasn't exactly in line with its original coinage.

tslmy5• 2 years ago

In a sense, I feel like the shanzhai are brethren of the classic western notion of hacker-entrepreneurs, but with a distinctly Chinese twist to them.

Accurate.

roenxi3• 2 years ago

the shanzhai could not only make an iPhone clone, they could improve it by giving the clone a user-replaceable battery

I don't think there is really a market for user-replaceable batteries, I have it picked as something the vocal minority want. But this is the productive way for people prove it as being a good idea or not.

It is very depressing that in the EU it would be legislated, in the US there'd be a big fight between the political parties about whether it should be legislated, and the Chinese bureaucrats are presumably too disorganised to mandate any which way so someone just builds it back in '09. Once the US would have been the home of this sort of free market capitalism.

There is a lesson here about bandwidth, governments, IP law and effective strategy.

omeid25• 2 years ago

I don't think there is really a market for user-replaceable batteries

Why do you think so?

roenxi3• 2 years ago

People didn't go crazy buying those Chinese knock-offs. They kept buying phones with the batteries sealed in them.

As a gut check, it does make sense people would prefer sturdiness and waterproofing to replaceable batteries and it seems likely that those things pull phone design in opposite directions.

hakfoo• 2 years ago

A "vocal minority" with a wallet is a market.

The question is probably "is the market it represents sufficient to sustain a product line which focuses on it?"

There are plenty of niche manufacturers who prove that you can survive in the smartphone business selling something other than "the exact form factor Apple and Samsung are offering". Oukitel with their 20,000 mAh batteries comes to mind.

RockRobotRock• 2 years ago

I really loved the Strange Parts videos where he went to these shops. So interesting.

omeid25• 2 years ago

All the comments suggesting the end of "Shanzhai" makes me wonder. Where is the next frontier of hacker-entrepreneurs?

The scale of cheap money and "Enterprise Entrepreneurialism" has made it very hard to discern wheat from the chaff, of course.

But I have a strong feeling --and I understand what that word means-- that there is something beyond all the grafts and scams and profiteering in the intersection of Virtual Reality, Crypto-Currencies, Internet of Things, and the availability of the personal computing capacity (ultra-powered smart phones) that is going to change the world, but I can't put my finger on it.

throwup238• 2 years ago

Where is the next frontier of hacker-entrepreneurs?

World War III, probably. Wherever that may take place. Seems like Taiwan, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East are the current prime candidates.

Symmetric conflicts is when technology really makes leaps and bounds.

omeid25• 2 years ago

I struggle to think of a conflict in any of the regions named to be symmetric. Unfortunately, or fortunately?, short of a nuclear war, we are never going to get symmetric war given how integrated the international economy is.

Consider the case of Ukraine and Russian sanctions, all but a sham and politicking with Turkey, China, and even US while being at the helm of sanctions, continue to trade directly or indirectly with Russia.

Reminds me of the famous line attributed to Albert Einstein that, "World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones" because the WWIII can't be but a Nuclear Armageddon.

JustinGoldberg95• 2 years ago

maybe those shanzhai hackers will finally have bitcoin and then Freedom Goes Up forever.

Look at the financial crisis in china going on that will require loads of stimulus.

Tech Trend: Shanzhai (2009)

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