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this article comes from the wechat public account:sanlian electronics factory pro, author: dong yi, producer: benjamin, editor: meka, title picture from: ai generation

"in just nine years, the biggest change we have made is the elimination of china's copycat mobile phones." this was a sigh made by lei jun at xiaomi's anniversary in 2019.

however, in the live broadcast room in 2024, not only were the copycat phones not eliminated, but they directly copied the high-end models of xiaomi and huawei. the redmi phones that young people prepared for their parents had not yet arrived. when they went home and took a look, their parents were surprised. not only did he bring back faded hetian jade and "lingzhi wrinkle-smoothing dragon's blood ointment" with unknown ingredients from the live broadcast room, he also brought back the 298 yuan xiaomi mi 14 ultra. of course, no need to look carefully, only one of the four cameras is useful, and the rest are several of them serve as foils.

the existence of the live broadcast room obviously makes it easier to buy a copycat phone., you only need to take over your parents’ mobile phone and scroll through a few short dramas and short videos and a few fake news from marketing accounts, and big data will proactively confess to you, “all the goods are here.”

this is the best place in the mobile phone industry. in terms of model, huawei meta 60 pro and samsung s24 ultra start. in terms of configuration, 8-core processor, 1tb memory, and 36 million pixels are all low-end. in terms of price, 398 and 298 will directly beat you. the price is reasonable, all earphones and data cables are included, and free shipping is delivered to your home.

no one knows who made these knock-off phones or how they were made, and even mainstream benchmarking software has difficulty uncovering their true origins. i only know that they are rich and powerful,if you are willing to help them distribute, you can get a commission of 80 yuan for a mobile phone worth more than 200 yuan.

of course, it would be better if their service life could exceed 30 minutes.

1. today’s copycat phones no longer have martial ethics.

from 2005 to 2015, when copycat phones were popular, compared to the simple fakes now, the copycat phones at that time were more of a tacit collusion with consumers.

you provide an incomplete service, and i pay the incomplete price., to address the urgent needs of the times. the cooperation was so tacit that many people were full of nostalgia for the various copycat products of that era.

however, solid and durable copycat phones have gradually become defective products with low profits in the eyes of manufacturers. today's copycat phones no longer have martial ethics. they no longer have the pioneering copycat aesthetics and no longer considerately use iphones and viivoos. the name tells you the essence of the product.

today’s copycat phones are basically scam phones.there is no originality in appearance, completely copied from apple, huawei,samsung, the performance is made up, basically all written in vain.

for example, the honor magic v3 pictured above was purchased online for 388 yuan. it has a leading edge snapdragon 888 ten-core processor, 16gb of running memory that is in line with major manufacturers, a 20,000 mah battery capacity that is larger than your power bank, and an 88-megapixel rear camera. play iphone.

but it doesn’t take anyone with a discerning eye to know that they are all fake. from size, battery life to chips, you can’t find a unified explanation for all the data on the official website and mobile phone display information: they all say it is an oled screen, but in fact they are all lcd screens; it is said to have a 1920hz flash strobe, but in fact the genuine products are not like this high; memory basically starts at 4 times the renewal price.

in terms of specific usage experience, the phone is basically full of advertisements. it can heat up to 40 degrees celsius in a few minutes of use. it needs to constantly clear the background. even so, it will basically freeze after half an hour of use. according to limited information, it can be roughly known that the maximum service life of this high-performance copycat phone is one month, and the minimum service life is only two days.

if you hold these phones in your hands and look through them carefully, the rough workmanship will become even more obvious: the arcs on the sides of the fuselage will peel off the paint, the buttons are crooked, and the promised fingerprint touch will not work on any part of the body. it can be unlocked, the network access license is fake, the matte shell is covered with a film, and the gap between the screen and the back panel is big enough to fit a piece of paper.

tested by a review blogger, source: @花花说

of course, users are not all stupid, and they are not spared. in the now-defunct kaliyu mobile live broadcast room, which was a smash hit, young users have already left critical comments in the live broadcast room.

but the anchors seem to know very well what they are doing. they seem to think this is just a game to fool fools. in the process of being constantly banned, the anchors themselves sometimes feel funny.

and these copycat phones, whose anchors don’t know the source of the goods, have also lost the traditional virtue of traditional copycat phones independently developing low-end electronic accessories.

nowadays, copycat phones rarely use cheap parts from local factories. they all use second-hand parts., opened a copycat phone produced in 2024 and took apart the casing. most of it should be foreign garbage. a blogger once dismantled a copycat phone that imitated the huawei meta40 and found a chip from seven years ago. there was no model or name on the battery, and the model numbers on other accessories had also been blurred, leaving only countless numbers. mottled traces left during the first disassembly and assembly.

therefore, the current copycat phones can no longer be called copycat phones. the official name should be second-hand refurbished copycat phones.

2. the disappeared live broadcast room, the last showroom for copycat phones

if there were no live broadcast rooms, the current copycat phones might be sold secretly on social media or fraudulently on second-hand platforms, but in any case they would not be as popular as they are now.

the live broadcast room can gather a large number of viewers in a short period of time, which is something that no platform or offline store can achieve. nowadays, offline copycat phones have almost disappeared, and it is difficult to see copycat phones on e-commerce platforms that focus on graphics and text. live broadcast rooms have almost become the main sales channel for copycat phones.

exactly how much money they make is hard to find out, but a hint can be found in fines. take the company lefort as an example. it has opened countless copycat live broadcast rooms on the internet.in just one infringement case, xiaomi was ordered to pay 37 million yuan in compensation.we all know that plagiarism and counterfeiting manufacturers usually include fines in their costs from the beginning. in other words, it is precisely because the fines never make more money that plagiarism and counterfeiting always exist. in short, the money love can earn must be a multiple of 37 million.

the brand leful has now disappeared. the lifespan of copycat phones is getting shorter and shorter, and the lifespan of copycat phone brands is also getting shorter and shorter.

on the short video platform, the lifespan of a copycat phone manufacturer will not exceed a few months, but it will be very busy throughout its life. once they are born, they will quickly copy themselves in a short period of time. after all, you only need to pay a deposit of 500 yuan to open a live broadcast room, and you can live broadcast and bring goods after gaining 1,000 fans. this cost is basically non-existent. counterfeit mobile phone manufacturers have been hiding behind them. in addition to continuously manufacturing new mobile phones, they are also constantly learning from mainstream live broadcast models, establishing their own live broadcast bases, and developing unique live broadcast room gameplay.

the innovative spirit of manufacturers has all been invested in the traffic battlefield. strong manufacturers not only have a complete supply ecosystem, but are also building their own live broadcast bases. they have not only developed advanced gameplay such as "exploding mobile phones" and "drawing blind boxes", anchors and pitchers who play major roles in the live broadcast chain have also become the focus of investment by manufacturers. and every time a live streaming model is taken over by a "head manufacturer", it will multiply and copy as quickly as the copycat phone itself, until it develops a stable routine:ship goods, recruit anchors, open several live broadcast rooms, then invest in traffic and wait for conversions, it sounds just like a farming game.

the mobile phone game of "drawing blind boxes" is all about excitement. picture source: @阿福开奖

huaqiangbei, which was once in decline after losing its traditional copycat phone business, has been swept back with the support of the live broadcast room and has become the wealth code of the new generation. in this craze for copycat phones, some people are making 100,000 a month, and some are making a million a year. huaqiangbei's traditional skills are shining through the cracks of history. as for how long it can last, it depends on how long sluggish consumption can last.

if you buy these machines one by one, it will be easier to discover the "same root and source" attribute of the copycat mobile phones behind the live broadcast room. different live broadcast rooms and even different platforms, but the products are actually similar. an unboxing blogger bought a fake iphone and a fake huawei from different places. the packaging boxes were the same, and they probably broke at the same time. maybe they were from the same manufacturer and the same guy. assembled.

of course, these live broadcast rooms will not exist for long, and neither douyin nor kuaishou have stopped controlling and banning them. as for when all these people's identities have been blacklisted by the platform, we don't know where the bosses will borrow their identities from.

after the live broadcast room disappeared, angry consumers could only express their dissatisfaction by posting negative reviews on their own accounts.

they asked: "if you do this business, who would dare to buy it?"

3. the evolution of copycat phones has never stopped

who is still buying copycat phones? judging from buyer reviews, people who buy copycat phones can be divided into three types: the elderly, children, and middle-aged people who fool the elderly and children. the last expression is: "i received it, my son likes it very much", or, "i received it, my grandpa likes it very much".

back then, buying a copycat phone was a kind of collusion between buyers and sellers, and now, it still seems to be the case among some people. it’s no longer a secret to use refurbished or fake phones to deceive the people around you. there is a merchant with the words "refurbished machine" in its name, and this is how to show us the usage scenarios of fake iphones:

"sister wang, i want to buy an iphone 16 as a gift. is one thousand enough?"

"your budget is too high! now for only 399, the brand new iphone16 pro max is unopened and will be delivered to your home within two hours!"

"great, bring it to me quickly. my girlfriend's birthday is tonight and i'm in a hurry to use it."

although such a video may be removed from the shelves in less than a day, it is enough to attract a group of buyers. of course, most people who buy knock-off phones and refurbished phones still use them for themselves. the first praise they give after receiving the phone is: it plays games smoothly and watches videos without lag. the rest is nothing to praise. he already had a premonition of his next fate, both inside and outside.

so no matter how cunning the counterfeit phone manufacturers are,its existence itself points to the huge demand behind it, and the demand itself makes it difficult to distinguish between good and bad., as long as there are, merchants and manufacturers will come to your side and serve you patiently. i don’t know since when, the copycat phone has also completed its evolution. it has figured out the needs of the target users before all other minds, and has long since changed from pragmatism to carpe diem. as a result, the copycat phone has also changed from a cheap and durable thing. it has become a mobile game arcade for 299 yuan a month.

in 2004, mediatek was selling mobile phone solutions everywhere, and copycat phones began to emerge. 2019,milletit has almost occupied the low-end phone market and announced the elimination of copycat phones. whether it is a copycat phone or xiaomi, they are all designed to meet market demand. in the past, people wanted to own mobile phones but had no money, so cheap, durable but incompletely functional copycat phones emerged; after 2010, old-age phones with simple functions quickly sank; in the past few years, traditional copycat phones such as ivvi and samsung were still in the market. it can be sold once, but now this kind of mobile phone can no longer be sold. huaqiangbei was once deserted, and the market for knockoff phones continued to shrink and seemed to be about to disappear.

however, as global smartphone shipments decline, sales of low-end phones have increased. in 2023, china's mobile phone shipments dropped by 5%, but sales of mobile phones priced below 1,000 yuan increased by 22% year-on-year. in such an environment, it is natural for counterfeit phones to resurgence. a statistics released by antutu last year showed that among the 8.43 million mobile phones verified and identified in the past 12 months, the proportion of fake or fake phones increased from 3.34% to 3.34%. increased to 3.6%.

after all, although the old copycat phones have disappeared, the position they relied on for survival will not disappear. the historical experience of making copycat phones and making a fortune has always remained in the minds of many people. as long as the conditions are right, they will immediately restart the assembly line. .

this article comes from the wechat public account:sanlian electronics factory pro, author: dongyi, producer: benjamin, editor: meka

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