As you probably know, Disrupt Beijing is happening next week and I’ll be heading south from Beijing after the event. I would love to hang out with folks in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. As it stands, I think we can put together a meet-up in Hong Kong on Wednesday Night (November 2nd) and another meet-up in Shenzhen on Friday night (November 4). I welcome recommendations for spots and I’d love to talk to start-ups and gadget folks in those cities.
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Foxconn is planning on replacing many of it’s hard-working human manufacturers with about 1 million robots, a number that, if you think about it, is a very telling comment on the current state of electronics manufacturing.
There are apparently 10,000 robots at the factory now and that number will increase by 300,000 next year. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou plans another million robots by 2014. The company currently employs 1.2 million humans.
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The first part of this video talked about the problem of counterfeiting in the Shanzhai markets. But not everything is fakey fakery – this is serious business.
The thing that’s most striking about this video is the fact that Shanzhai phones are made not in someone’s kitchen but in multi-story buildings by trained assemblers. It’s an industry and the same folks who make the iPhoney are probably also assembling more mainstream models. → Read More
It’s hard to believe, but 1 out of 5 phones in the world is counterfeit and the vast majority come from Shenzhen. This ten-minute video explores the Shanzhai phenomenon and the “mobile phoney” market, a wild west sort of world where counterfeit iPhone 4s are hard to tell apart from their real counterparts.
The Shanzhai market sees the sale of these phones as a sort of a system of liberation that allows items once owned by the elite to trickle down to the rest of the world. The obvious concern – that these are not the same quality as the “real” thing – is made moot by the fact that these things are so cheap and have such diverse features that you’re really talking about an entirely new device for an entirely new market. → Read More
A Chinese games company, ShunXiang Technology, has created a four-player, arcade version of Plants Vs. Zombies. “Great,” you say. “I love PvZ!” But wait, there’s more! → Read More
http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XMjUyOTYwMjI4/v.swf A video making the rounds on Chinese websites shows a young student being picked up from the University in Shandong province in a little red helicopter. The chopper lands in a field, she hops on, and flies away. I, for one, consider that a pretty bad ass way to get too and from school, ostentation be damned. → Read More
The first half of Going it Alone, Part III: Inside the Factory Walls appeared on CrunchGear yesterday. We pick up our survey of how consumer electronics are made with … Injection Molding “One Word: Plastics”. Injection molding is the process by which hot, liquefied plastic is injected into steel (or sometimes other materials) cavities called moulds, under high-pressure. There is a real art to injection molding that includes proper design of the parts themselves, the moulds that form the parts and the various parameters that can be tweaked during the injection process itself. For now, suffice to say that all of the plastic components of your product are made – one at a time – using this process. In the photo at the very top of this post, this would include the white housing components, black belt clip and battery door, translucent LCD cover, rubber buttons and even that tiny, little white spec which is the “Set” button from the rear of the unit. One or two workers typically operate the station. A first worker runs the injection molder, removing each newly molded part by hand. A second worker removes flash – excess unwanted plastic – from the finished part using a knife. The final parts are carefully stacked in bins for transport to the assembly area mentioned above or, if injection is an outside process, for shipment to the main factory. → Read More
Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government’s SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam’s writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here. It’s Saturday morning at 6am. I’m about to leave my Boston apartment for the first of three legs from Logan International Airport to Hong Kong via New York and Tokyo. I will arrive at 10:30pm on Sunday. Against insurmountable odds it appears that both my Boston and New York flights are on-time – an anomaly if there ever was one given that we’ve had a full week of driving rain in Boston and two feet of snow in Westchester County, just 45 minutes north of New York City where my parents told me they’ve had to sleep at a friend’s place because they’ve been without power for days. Still, never to disappoint, and despite clear sunny skies, my commuter flight from Boston to New York is delayed almost two hours on account of “missing personnel.” This conjures up images of airline top brass scrambling around to replace the guy who’s responsible for loading the salty snacks on the plane (as if) when the gate agent clarifies that our secondary officer is on his way from another city. Or maybe he overslept. Fortunately, having learned my lesson just months ago when traveling to a trade event in Las Vegas (my luggage was lost, never to be recovered to this day!) I seemingly accurately surmised that the chances of my checked baggage successfully navigating three airplanes and two carriers would be slim-to-none. As such, I had packed light. My fiancee made me pack two pair of pants, which I felt to be overkill, but I have a feeling I’ll thank her later. → Read More
The cellphone market in Shenzhen is like a flea market where everyone is selling the same thing. If it looks like an iPhone, it’s here. There are hundreds of models, hundreds of odd names, and hundreds of people arrayed along the inside of a huge room. There are four or five floors of this mess. This is the Shanzhai market. → Read More
I’m sitting on a darkened patio of a club called Viva in the Futian district of Shenzhen. It’s not too late – about 1am – and the place is busy but not full. It’s mostly ex-pats here, folks who work at the various sourcing companies nearby. This place is so anti-China that it almost looks European. Techno is blaring out of the bar and there’s a pool table. Down the way is a coffee house where English teachers from Vermont are playing chess. A little further down is a Tuscan restaurant run by a real Italian who sits at his own table and eyes the clientele. One plate of pasta there costs more than what the average Chinese makes in a week. This is the other Shenzhen. It’s a cocoon, perhaps, or an escape. It used to be worse. There used to be one bar where all the ex-pats went. It was just like in Prague where, for years, there were only one or two spots they flocked to, where they isolated themselves from the tumult of a post-Communist society. → Read More
For a long time my concept of sourcing – basically order fulfillment – was all wrong. When I ordered a USB charger or headphones for my phone or MP3 player, I thought some little old lady in Texas headed over to a warehouse, put the item in a box, gummed on a few stamps, and sent the item posthaste. I’m sure there was a computer in there somewhere, but it was a pure transaction – item, box, mail truck, my door. Little did I know that everything in the world came out of a one-square mile gated complex in Shenzhen, China. The area is called the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and it’s an ultra-dense supernova of commerce. Items sold from the zone are shipped out through customs officials and you can’t take a laptop or a phone in or out without proper paperwork. It is a capitalistic game preserve designed to allow ostensibly Communist China to enable ostensibly capitalistic suppliers to do business with the world while taking advantage of China’s low wages and vast populace. → Read More
The driver pulled up to a small office complex in the heart of the city and beckoned us into the back of his scuffed white van. The surface of the vehicle was caked in dust and the seats, clad in new blue velvet, were sized for someone much smaller. I curled up in the back and we were off into the city, cars coming at all sides and bikes darting out in front of the unflappable driver, his smile never wavering as we drove. I was on my way to a factory outside of Shenzhen, a city of 14 million people mostly dedicated to the manufacture of the things we buy. If it beeps, makes phone calls, or increasingly, if you can wear it, it’s probably come from out here. We roll through the city to the outskirts and then onto a wide five-lane highway that rolls up through the smog, past rocks and hills that look like a stage set for a Kung Fu fable. This is modern China, a place of conflicting images and a world of untrammeled growth. → Read More
Greetings from sunny Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong. I’ve spent some time in Asia – at least the tech centers – and have never found a place like this. It’s like Blade Runner meets 1990s Prague meets the end of the world. I’m here to report on what’s going on here in terms of electronics and how it’s changing the way we think about price, cost, and value. It’s pretty crazy. Thirty years ago Shenzhen was a rice paddy, a town of about 50,000 souls. Today it is a hive, and a dirty one at that. Smog is a way of life. As the sun goes down over the city, the streets take on an amber cast and the darkness falls quickly. There are no picturesque sunsets here. → Read More
