In Taobao, the counterfeit machine will never end
[ad_1]
From a dialectical point of view, counterfeit phones still exist for more than ten years, and naturally there are reasons for their existence. But it does not mean that consumers have no requirements on the quality of products, or even whether they are fake or shoddy.
“6.5-inch high-definition screen, smart island front camera, 7800mAh battery, dual-card multi-mode, 4800W pixels…”
If you only look at the promotion on Taobao Tmall, this “23 models of 14promax” mobile phone with a monthly sales of 500+ starting at 558 yuan has almost the same appearance as the iPhone 14pro max, and the hardware stack is quite attractive, even not losing to many mainstream brands. .
Tan Lin, who looked “pretty good”, planned to buy one as a birthday present for his father.
When he was about to pay and place an order, Qin Lin copied the 3C certification number to China Quality Certification Center on a whim. The result was beyond his expectation. The result of the query was “no matching record found”.
This means that it is very likely that this is a “three noes” copycat machine.
In the past ten years, the competition in China’s mobile phone market led by “OV Rongmi” and Huawei has become increasingly fierce, and it has a mature and rich product line. As the Matthew effect in the domestic mobile phone market becomes prominent, 360, Smartisan, Coolpad, Lenovo and other once-dominant domestic brands are also declining in the competition.
Together with the above-mentioned brands, the living space has been squeezed and “disappeared” in the mainstream of the market, there are countless grotesque or knockoff phones that are very similar to the brand.
“Counterfeit phones in China have been completely wiped out.” In August 2019, Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, said so.
However, the experiences of Tan Lin and others have proved a fact: the copycat phones have never died out, and many of them are still alive after changing their looks or skins, and many of them are even alive very well.
It’s just that it has moved away from the spotlight, and has shifted from the past TV advertisements and offline shopping malls to the main position led by Taobao. From the perspective of users, these “cottage phones” regard the elderly and students who are sinking in the market as the main consumer groups, and have embarked on a path of encircling the market in rural areas.
01 “New Shanzhai” makes a comeback
When Lei Jun asserted that “the counterfeit machine has been eliminated”, he may not have gone through some investigation.
Today, when searching for “mobile phone” on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Tmall, the price range is set at 50-1,000 yuan. From hundreds of thousands of search results, three trends can be easily summarized.
One is the low-end models of Xiaomi (including Redmi, Redmi), vivo, OPPO, Honor and other brands – some of which are sold in the form of brand official flagship stores; Brands in “memory” have been revived after a makeover; the third is Bashuo, viipoo, Pepsi, ivvi, qopo, Xiaoxing and other mobile phones that most consumers have never heard of.
From the product point of view, the latter two do have a “strong cottage flavor”.
For example, Philips mobile phones are currently on sale on Taobao and Tmall platforms. The price ranges from 188 yuan to 989 yuan. The functions vary according to the price, including double-sided screen smart, 4G flip, light luxury business, super long There are standby phones for the elderly, ultra-thin games for students, and even a dedicated mobile phone for Internet addiction.
However, these mobile phone configurations are sorry for the price. Take the Philips PH6 double-sided screen e-sports game student mobile phone priced at 989 yuan as an example. This mobile phone is equipped with an M6769 chip-there is no chip named after this in the market. It is speculated that the chip is probably MediaTek MT6769 chip. It has been 8 years since the launch of a chip, and it is difficult to match the powerful functions it advertises.
More importantly, according to the previous analysis of Liu Buchen, a senior analyst in the home appliance industry, most of the Philips brands that can be seen on the market, including consumer products such as mobile phones and TVs, have been sold by Philips. Manufactured in the factory and sold on OEM. Philips is neither involved in R&D nor production, and is only responsible for charging brand licensing fees.
To put it simply, the so-called Philips mobile phone is actually an OEM “cottage phone”. It is impossible for ordinary consumers to know who is behind the production and sales.
Brands such as Duowei, Newman, and Sony Ericsson have many products that are extremely similar to mobile phones such as Huawei, Apple, and vivo—including appearance design, lens position, color font, etc., which makes the outside world inevitably suspect that they are “cottages.”
For products such as Bashuo, viipoo, Pepsi, and qopo Xiaoxing, the “plagiarism” is more thorough. For example, the “Pepsi Phone X14 Pro Max” sold on Taobao is priced at 994 yuan. Judging from the naming, the first half seems to be the marriage of “Pepsi” with beverage giants Pepsi and Robust, and the second half “Phone X14 “Pro Max” is the same naming method as Apple. In terms of packaging box and appearance design, it is exactly the same as iPhone 13 Pro.
It is worth mentioning that, in addition to the above two products that cannot escape the “suspicion of copycats”, there is another situation that exists in a large number on Taobao and Tmall: there is neither a brand name nor any relevant production and manufacturing information. Even if I click on the details, I can’t find any brand names.
It is such an unmistakable “copycat machine”, but it attracts students and other user groups to buy it with slogans such as “Play the King of Chicken games, student-priced e-sports games” and “2023 new official authentic 5G”.
This is roughly divided into two situations. One is that the merchants on the Taobao platform independently sell “cottage phones”, and the other is that the store has a reminder of “Tao Factory Direct Sales” and sells them in the form of “Tiantian Special Store”-according to its explanation and external publicity, Tao Factory Direct Sales is under Ali The operating brand directly connected to the factory has the endorsement of the Taobao platform in terms of supply chain and product quality.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this that some “cottage phones” put Taobao’s endorsement in an important position when selling them.
For example, the “2023 brand new official 14promax student price 256G smartphone” with a monthly sales of 100+, which claims to be “directly sold by Amoy Factory without price difference”, has 5 versions and models, priced from 411 yuan to 768 yuan.
Judging from the information on the display page, the phone is very similar to the iPhone 14 promax body design, model name and even promotional slogan, but consumers have no way of knowing the brand-related information on the homepage-only by clicking “detailed parameters” Learned that the brand name is “STARLET”.
“The main reason is to create an illusion that users can buy Apple mobile phones at a low price.” A senior e-commerce industry observer said that this also satisfies some consumers who cannot afford real iPhones and use “cottage mobile phones” out of vanity. “The psychology of substitution.
From the above situation, we can draw an obvious conclusion: In Taobao, not to mention the “elimination” of counterfeit mobile phones, the platform is surrounded by counterfeit mobile phones. Even some “cottage phones” are still endorsed by the platform, selling hundreds of thousands of units a month.
02 The value dialectics of counterfeit phones
“Counterfeit phones have existed on e-commerce platforms for a long time.” A senior observer of the e-commerce industry said that the logic of all shanzhai phones has been the same for many years, and they are based on a certain model or a combination of certain well-known brand products to exaggerate publicity , playing a low-price strategy.
From a dialectical point of view, counterfeit phones still exist for more than ten years, and naturally there are reasons for their existence.
In the era when the per capita income was not high, foreign brands such as Nokia and Motorola monopolized the market, and the average price of mobile phones was several thousand yuan, owning a mobile phone of several hundred yuan was the dream of many people.
Since 2005, relying on MediaTek’s MTK platform solution and Huaqiangbei’s complete supply chain, mobile phone manufacturing has become a simple assembly game. The cottage phone industry, which focuses on knockoffs, assembly, and refurbishment, has swept the market overnight.
By 2009, the counterfeit mobile phone industry had reached its peak.
In the iSuppli report data, China sold 145 million counterfeit phones in 2009, equivalent to about 13% of the global mobile phone shipments in 2009. If you count the shipments to Africa and other places, it will be even more amazing. Many Huaqiangbei bosses put into production millions of copies at the beginning of the year, and they can often earn hundreds of millions at the end of the year.
Since then, the iPhone has become the benchmark in the industry, and the Google Android system has led to the gradual rise of domestic mobile phone brands such as Huawei, vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi, etc. The mainstream of the market disappears.
From an objective point of view, apart from original sins such as “plagiarism”, “disgusting the real ones” and “low-end assembly”, copycat phones are not useless.
Because of their cheapness, large screens, large batteries, and high volume, counterfeit phones have met the basic needs of some consumers for mobile phones. Dual card dual standby, lifting camera, and reverse charging technology are all created by counterfeit phones, objectively breaking the domestic monopoly of Nokia and Samsung, and laying some foundations for the rise of the current Chinese smartphone industry.
Among the countless counterfeit phones, there are also a few big brands. Among them, the most representative brands are Transsion, which firmly occupies the top spot in African mobile phones, and Elephant Mobile, which is deployed in the markets of Europe, North America, South America and the Middle East.
Obviously, the low price is the most important reason for the growth of the knock-offs—until now, the low-cost phones still have enough market appeal.
According to data from Counterpoint Research, in the first quarter of 2023, compared with the same period last year, domestic mobile phones priced below US$150 will increase by 22%.
This means that entry-level phones are still a market with a huge stock and incremental users, especially in the vast sinking market, as well as the middle-aged, elderly and student groups, entry-level low-end phones still have great potential.
In the past few years, the rapid rise of “sinking market giants” represented by Pinduoduo and Kuaishou has truly activated the vast sinking market. It just so happens that mainstream mobile phone brands are raising the average price of their products one after another and establishing a high-end brand image, leaving a huge market space.
After seeing this opportunity, brands such as Gionee, Nietzsche, and Newman who had a certain reputation “reduced their stature” and focused on entry-level low-end phones. In addition, unknown small brands such as Bashuo, viipoo, Pepsi, ivvi, and qopo Xiaoxing have also emerged as the times require to start a copycat business, and flooded into Taobao and other e-commerce platforms overnight.
“In 2009, most of the counterfeit phones relied on offline stores.” Some industry observers said that after the rise of e-commerce platforms, the channel of counterfeit phones has gradually shifted to online, and Taobao, which has a low entry threshold, has become the platform of choice. .
03 The original sin is still there, whose fault is it?
On Taobao, there is another phenomenon worthy of attention: many counterfeit phones are branded with the slogan “Huawei HSM Official Authentic Product”, but the appearance of the product is similar to other main flagships such as iPhone, vivo, and OPPO.
“Is this Huawei or Apple?” On July 10 this year, the well-known digital blogger “Bad Review Emperor” posted a question on Weibo.
What is clear is that these phones have nothing to do with Huawei officials—Huawei HSM, which generally refers to Huawei Mobile Services. Huawei Mobile Services is a service that provides multiple components for users, and has HMS open capabilities for developers, such as account services, in-app payment services, and push services.
To put it simply, this is the Huawei HMS ecosystem, which is similar to the Android ecosystem, Hongmeng ecosystem, and IOS ecosystem. The reason why these counterfeit phones are promoted with the slogan “Huawei HSM official” is just a gimmick to attract more users to buy.
Indeed, there are objective reasons for the existence of counterfeit phones, but this does not mean that consumers only need to look at the “lookalike” appearance and low price, and have no requirements for the quality of the product, or even whether it is fake or shoddy.
In 2021, a consumer bought a Huawei Enjoy 9 model mobile phone from a store on Taobao. The price was nearly half that of the same model in other stores.
After the consumer failed to defend his rights and had no choice but to call the police, the police arrested Taobao store owners Lu and Xu according to the clues. The truth of the matter was beyond imagination. The so-called genuine mobile phone was originally assembled by the merchant using old parts. In December of that year, the Shanghai Chongming District Procuratorate prosecuted the counterfeit registered trademark case, and the two Taobao shopkeepers were sentenced to several years in prison.
“For many counterfeit phones, it is very common that the product is not the right board, cannot be turned on, the SIM card cannot be read, the pixels are blurred, the battery is false, the network access license is different from the promotion on the e-commerce platform, etc..” Many mobile phone industry Observers said, not to mention the so-called “Smart Island” function, which is often a misnomer.
On a whim, Qin Lin bought “Bashuo 23 14promax” on Taobao, copied the 3C certification number announced by the store and went to the China Quality Certification Center to check, but there was no result-this is a typical phenomenon.
The problem remains that the platform seems powerless in terms of supervision and governance. During Double 11 in 2021, The Paper exposed that the Taobao platform was suspected of selling counterfeit and shoddy mobile phones, and revealed that a large number of similar mobile phones were sold on Taobao. The exposed phone was quickly taken off the shelves, but other similar phones are still on sale. The reply from the customer service is that consumers need to prove themselves in order to protect their rights.
“The platform can only deal with obvious trademark infringements, such as the use of Apple and iPhone in product titles and slogans, and the use of the Apple logo in the main image.” Some people in the industry have previously said that whether it is a counterfeit phone is more determined by consumers. From the perspective of merchants, it is not necessarily an infringement. If the platform handles it rashly, it may even be countersued by the merchants.
Of course, there is another reason. The platform actually knows that it is a “cottage phone”, but it acquiesces and even encourages merchants to sell it-“2023 brand new official genuine 14promax student price 256G”, “Tao Factory direct sales without price difference” mobile phones with no brand name exposed , is the best case.
So, why do you just check the comment area of any of the above stores, and they are all positive reviews? “It’s no secret that e-commerce platforms have falsified reviews and swiped orders.” According to an industry insider, from his observations, many counterfeit mobile phones have the same commentary skills, and the photo angles and backgrounds are also very similar.
As early as August 2015, the Consumer Council of Guangdong Province formally issued a warning letter to Taobao based on consumer complaints, saying that cashback for positive reviews was suspected of breaking the law. In June last year, in order to quickly improve sales, evaluation, reputation and other qualifications, 5 Taobao stores in Qingdao “spread orders and speculate”, and 5 merchants involved in the case amounted to nearly 160,000 yuan. A total of 40,000 yuan.
In any case, no matter whether it is a counterfeit phone or the e-commerce platform behind it, it cannot just attract customers with low prices and exaggerated and false propaganda. From the perspective of e-commerce platforms, the “Consumer Rights Protection Law” clearly stipulates that the platform is obliged to guarantee The products sold on the platform meet the relevant quality requirements, there is no false publicity, and they do not infringe the legitimate rights and interests of others.
This article is from the WeChat public account “Jiji Commercial” (ID: jdsy2020), author: Jiji Studio, 36 Krypton is authorized to publish.
[ad_2]
Source link
