Financial Time Chinese posted an article that the industry set to tighten rules on handset codes by introducing a stricter regime for the allocation of handset identification numbers, in order to rein the rapid growth of illegitimate handsets, also referenced in several Chinese cyberspace.
The article pointed out that the shipment of whilebox handsets
were set to jump 44 per cent to 145m units, or 13 per cent of the global legitimate handset market, this year.
The tighter restrictions might be able to delay the rapid growth of the ultimate whitebox handsets, but in the remote country of China, where everything has a way of working round, those once illegitimate handsets have found their way getting into the legitimate market.
Not only in China, the most commonly used distribution channel for handsets are not through carriers as the western world; the handsets are sold in small shop, big flee market for electronics, where you can buy anything including iPhone (you can choose you want the US version, EU version, HK version… you name it), or the very alike clone of branded handsets.
But also many of those whilebox handset homebrew house has now grown big that they either have set up their own brand or became a supplier for bigger domestic manufacturers.
The fact is that the statistics have shown that about 50% of the handsets currently in the hands of Chinese mobile phone users are from domestic, neither a domestic manufacture or Whitebox homebrew house. Given that the mobile subscribers has topped 650 million, there’re about 300 million of those handsets are out there already being sold.
When it is still a small river it makes sense to build a dam to control its current, but when it has become an ocean, it is just insane try to stop the wave. Chris Anderson said in his book FREE: China is the place where piracy has won. Figuring out a way to join the flow and make it better regulated to fit in the legislated world, is better than trying to cut them out, and struggle to protect the interest of the big boys.
[...] the handset market globally and more so almost 50% of the market in China, as we have reported in a previous [...]