Chinese Manufacturing: Renovation or Rebuilding?

1. Is It Only A Village Phone?

Can you image that a mobile phone also works as a digital camera with long lens and PSP functions? Can you imagine that the auto-shaped and watch-shaped genies (Figure 1) are also mobiles with Bluetooth, PDA and other functions just like Iphone, Ipod and blackberry? Yes, they are mobiles and only at the expenses of no more than one hundred dollars? When you are wandering in the street in China, you might encounter young boys and girls with such cool-shaped things in their hands in a very arrogant manner, please never be surprised. These are all mobiles, cool but cheap cell phones! Though they have varieties of shapes, functions and other characteristic features, in China there is a very funky buzzword as their name—village phone, pirate phone or MTK phones¹.

Figure 1.

Auto-shaped, watch-shaped, and digital camera genies that are also mobile phones with Bluetooth, PDA, and other functions