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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

It’s the classic situation. China can outcompete all this stuff. It doesn’t really matter. Roomba, GoPro, they’re all going to be crushed by Chinese manufacturers. You just can’t get the margins to work anywhere else and if you do the R&D you’re a sucker.

I’ve had a few GoPros and a few GoPro 360s. I also had Roombas so you can blame me as the brand killer.

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If you look at these US high-tech consumer products, many companies started out much “simpler”. GoPro was a disposable film camera and a wrist-strap, and iteratively got to where it is today. The iPod came out much before the iPhone. As you say, the R&D is a hard sell when you have to go from 0 product to a fully featured state-of-the-art. Somehow, these Chinese companies can spend years copying and then once locked in go on a new-features blitz.

So why doesn't the US do it in reverse? Surely there's some R&D going on in China that US can reverse engineer.

They need to learn Chinese first, then to watch Chinese forums.

Bad examples. Roomba and GoPro failed to their own complacency while competition jumped over them.

Car industry is better example, west tech export just to get cheaper prices fueled the growth of local companies that then outcompeted the west by just industrial might.

Is GoPro not manufactured in China?

Some in China, but also Thailand and Mexico. They seem to be playing whack-a-mole with manufacturing contractors and changes to tariff policy.

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