What $50 buys you at the Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen, China
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Of course there are other considerations like cheap labour and the ability to rip-off Western IP (though I don't think those goods make it to the West). But these can't explain why China in particular is so dominant in manufacturing.
[0] I'm told that the term "guanxi" has two meanings. First as a generic term for "connection" or "relationship" and second as a proper noun for the way people indirectly bribe government officials. Here only the first meaning would apply since I'm talking about B2B relationships. And since it's a generic term, there is no reason to use the Chinese word.
[1] Or screws you more than is considered fair game.
It was amazing how close they were to copying a real iPhone in terms of the hardware design, but it was always funny to see them run a version of Android. They were selling them for $10 a pop as well. It's incredible to check out these electronic markets in China and see the effort that goes into these fakes.
Yeah, that's the most incredible part for me: I just can't understand the economics that allow such low prices. Every time I read about it, I get strong Neuromancer vibes.
See also Bunnie Huang's analysis of a $12 phone, back in 2013: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107
And his follow-up essay about the Chinese "open-source" (quotes very much needed) model: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
All right. I need to think about these things, and life in general.
Maybe that's the answer to Dark Matter, the interior of a black hole, and dare I say it?... the Big Bang itself. Just... tiny... used... underwear.
https://youtu.be/uWzRvwg9z3E?t=105
We are talking Stormtroopers doing Single Ladies. They are also found twerking. Seriously?
That needs some consideration. :)
http://1.media.dorkly.cvcdn.com/49/88/218a3fcaad60f3ab12f55e...
How is that even possible? The raw materials almost have to cost more than that on the market.
Where it gets dicey are fringe cases, and on poorly controlled specs. Care about the temperature drift of your resistor, the slew rate of your op-amp, the beta of that BJT, or the mismatched LED strings in the COB?
Better test it to make sure it'll work for you, because 90% of the time, it's bullshit.
For common parts, it's easy to set up a new line, running off good parts -- the 555 timers and lm317s do enough volume for a new line to make sense. These chips are usually better characterized. If it's a small volume part, or something old as dirt, it's usually pulls, a new part in an old case, or just a normal part remarked.
Sadly, a lot of the Aliexpress stuff is so cheap because it's unlicensed/knockoffs. It'll work, but in a lot of cases, it's the hardware equivalent of pirating software. :/
Let me find my eye patch and parrot.
All the expats in China use it. You need to figure out shipping though.
If a part is critical, I'll buy a known, characterized, device made by a reputable manufacturer from a reputable supplier. (I don't expect that an Omron 50A relay on Alibaba for $5 is real) But for generic LEDs, non-critical switches & connectors, it's Alibaba/Aliexpress all the way.
I also can't feel good supporting fakes / copies and China's mistreatment of the environment for profit.
Discovering aliexpress was pretty awesome
though admittedly haven't used/tested a lot of it
I've ordered things like a dirt cheap soldering iron, a multimeter, a bluetooth mini keyboard for controlling the laptop when watching TV, USB charging cables, PCIe cables, LED strips, flawless, high quality knockoff sunglasses, etc and never had any issues. If you sort by most orders you normally filter out the worst of the crap.
Some of the manufacturers have interesting ideas around mains safety. I'd be wary of dirt cheap soldering irons.
If you buy something more expensive, look for feedback from others. Don't assume it'll be ok. It might be something that only works for China.
I have bought loads from AliExpress. Pretty much comparable experience to a cheap store. Meaning: quality is sometimes poor, but similar experience to going to a shop. Most of the sellers are very concerned with their star rating btw.
Moreover, I'm not even sure how does the rating system on AliExpress work. I wasn't even given an option to rate the seller. The official support is terrible; they'd act as if they're very concerned but they wouldn't do anything even if the seller doesn't respond to any of your messages.
It's so bad you have to search for name brands to get the real stuff.
I think I got offered "Samsung", "Kingston" and "SanDisk" cards at roughly (but not exactly) the same pricing. Retail packaging was available at a small extra charge.
Even at that markup, I'll be the low-cost supplier, so maybe I should go for 15x. If it works out, I can think of a few other markets that have a need for something like this.
It's amazing: no way in hell could I even buy the raw parts, much less assemble and test full units, for what I can purchase these for.
As for the fake SD cards, I'm kind of disappointed they didn't take the opportunity and produced the world's first 100TB SD card (patent pending). I'd be curious how many phones would be wrecked by such a card just because of the announced size.
Anyone can buy these in any quantity. If you have a few hundred dollars and are interested in learning a little about business in China, it would be a fun exercise to import and sell something like these rings on Amazon.
It was really interesting to do though. Talking with the Sales people on Skype was kind of funny, I remember in one profile picture, the guy had a western outfit on (cowboy hat, bandana, the works). I think a lot of the Sales people did that kind of stuff to connect and seem more trustworthy with Americans.
I also picked up some single units of headphones and breathalyzers. All the headphones were garbage. Some of the breathalyzers actually seemed pretty nice, but they would be expensive to purchase in bulk, and it seemed legally risky.
The main cost/challenge I found was shipping. Air is quick and easy, but really expensive. Going by sea is cheap in comparison, but requires you operate at a bigger scale. There's a name for companies/people you can hire that will handle all the tricky parts of shipping by sea (I want to say Freight Agent but am not sure).
Completely unsustainable (the tiny margins I did make would have been completely wiped out if I was paying proper taxes) but did teach me a lot about business.
You screen print solder paste through the stencil, onto the board.
You then push the components onto the paste.
In the past you didn't have to be too precise, because surface tension of the solder as it flowed would pull it onto its pad, and would align the component correctly.
For production you'd have camera aligned tables.
Re rework you have little tiny masks.
Here's a bit of video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaqeLrLxYOg (Screen printing starts at about 1:40)
I used to operate a screen printer, pick and place machine, and reflow oven. But that was 12 years ago. The machines are amazing now.
https://youtu.be/Iu0pd6OsNF4?t=235 https://youtu.be/2bGb5AOwp44?t=109
A brand new BGA chip has hundreds of solder balls underneath, acting like the pins on a DIP package. When the component is reworked, the balls are damaged and need to be replaced. After removing the old balls, the stencil can be used to apply solder paste and new solder balls to the chip. Once the chip is reballed, it can be reflowed onto the board.
I have ordered lots of stuff from there and it has all turned up approximately in my mailbox 3 to 6 weeks later. I have generally ordered items which are less than the ~£15 customs threshold. More expensive items might be liable to VAT or other duties: https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/overview
Other sites have begun started to ship from warehouses inside the EU to avoid customs issues, e.g. http://eud.dx.com/
If you have never seen these sites before then you should be warned that they even simple searches will return hundreds or thousands of results. You might spend a long time searching though the results for even something mundane like LED bike lights:
DX 380 results: http://eud.dx.com/category/bike-light-1644 Aliexpress 18000 results: https://www.aliexpress.com/category/122803/bicycle-light.htm...
EDIT: since you specifically mention components:
e.g. a search for 100nf capacitors:
DX: http://eud.dx.com/search/100nf%20capacitor - Frankly the results are poor, DX is aimed at more end user products.
Aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S... - Results have several suppliers offering 100 pieces at <£1 including delivery! I have ordered capacitors and resistors similar to these and they all turned up in the post several weeks later, just as I expected.
If you're getting started in electronics, I'd suggest buying mixed value kits of common passive components. They're really cheap and very handy to have around. If you work with SMD components, these sample books are a huge timesaver:
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=sample+book
PCBs from China are cheap enough that I haven't etched my own boards in years:
Aoyue and Yihua make very cheap and surprisingly usable soldering tools. You can get a perfectly acceptable temperature-controlled soldering iron or hot air gun for about £25. You might as well stock up on solder, flux and wick too.
Taobao is a bit of a crapshoot if you can't read Chinese, but it's where you'll find the really insane bargains and the sexy new chips. There are a variety of English-speaking agents who can buy stuff for you for a reasonable fee. Dangerous Prototypes have a useful forwarding service - have stuff delivered to their office and they'll send it on to you for $3 per parcel plus the cost of shipping.
I've got a bunch of low-quality pictures of the markets I've been meaning to push up to Flickr. I just need to go through and weed out the stuff that's horribly out of focus.
The one thing I've never gotten good pictures of is a pretty common sight on a Sunday afternoon: A couple of guys hanging out at their shop stall kitting out "iPhone6" boxes with new phones, earbuds, manuals, etc.
BBC Worldwide: I'd buy (a subscription to?) this series - do you want my money?
Though I did have a native speaker (Helen) who lives in Shenzhen with me the whole time.
It needs the waterproofing in part because of the insane monsoon weather that blows into south China and will soak you in seconds and because a lot those packages get shuttled around in the back of open half-truck-half-motorcycles until they get to major distribution nodes.
It's 10 cents per square meter.
It's also partly cultural (everyone else does it this way) - and most sellers are small operations of a handful of people.
It provides seller protection for online purchases.
It doesn't make high value items look inviting.
The cardboard is frequently sourced or reused from whatever is lying around and cut to size so there's less need for filler when using 'standard' Amazon A1, B14, F3, etc style boxes.
Waterproofing is the obvious thing, but the tape makes the boxes much tougher. The tension of the tape makes the box much stiffer and more resistant to crush damage. The tape layer also smooths the surface and prevents the cardboard from snagging on package handling equipment. If the box is punctured, it's held together by the tape and is much less likely to rip open.
Many Chinese sellers use expanded polystyrene boxes for shipping fragile items, of the sort you'd see in a fish market. They're quite flimsy on their own, but become unbelievably tough when wrapped in tape.
- If is a hardware rip-off is bad - If is a software rip-off is open source!
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Consider that the bulk of open-source ignore all that pesky patent and IP and is directly people-to-people.
They don't do any of the hard engineering or go through meticulous testing and QA. They blatantly copy, and as such provide no innovation. Stop supporting this behavior, have some pride for the products you buy.
I'd love to see some photos of these supposed great clones of iPhones and high end Androids. All the ones I've seen for sale on grey market sites look pretty fake.
The device looks a lot like an Apple Watch, but the functionality is a little bit different. Sure, it has a pedometer and a sleep tracker. If you pair it with your phone, it can act as a bluetooth speaker and microphone. What sets this device apart is what you’ll find when you pop off the battery cover and remove the tiny little battery. There’s a SIM slot and an SD card slot. If you drop a SIM into the watch, you can make calls and surf the web. If you drop an SD card into the SD slot, you can use the phone’s camera to shoot grainy, low-resolution photos from your wrist. The vendor assured us that the watch would last about 3 days on standby.
So when Apple ships an iWatch with the ability to run standalone without an iPhone, remember "they blatantly copy, and as such provide no innovation"