About white and blue Chinese, or 3 sources and 3 components of the electronics market

Someone Urry_MPG somewhere in the expanses of the Web wrote about the appearance on sale of a video player from the company BBK Electronics. This posting, written on March 2, 2009, is the answer that will help you to understand whether “pricing” to different HD players is worth running for this “miracle” to the store.

Urry_MPG wrote:

On February 28th, sales of a mutant from Popcorn and BBK called PopcornTV began, [...]
In online stores, sales have actually begun, and they are asking for a device with a built-in disk for 500 gig to 15,500 rubles. [...]
In short, with the beginning of the dumping from BBK, a downward price correction is possible for all NMT.

There are 2 main types of electronics companies.

1) First, "white." These are well-known, often transnational, corporations, the capital of which usually lies in the USA or developed countries of Europe. "White" they are because they pay money to the colossal number of white-collar workers.
The "white" firms have a big "plus" : it is simply not economically profitable for them to make and sell outright rubbish. Such a product would hit their reputation, which is quite important to them. There is a smaller “plus”, but also important: these firms are actually involved in the progress. They invent. They are searching. They create previously unknown technologies, using previously unknown physical effects and methods not previously available techniques. They pay scientists and inventors, they spend money on research and development.
They have a big "minus" : determining the price for the end user, they multiply the cost of their products by 5. They are not interested in less. And the bulk of the money received from customers goes not at all to research and development. And on the zombie of the whole world, on the conviction of people that this technique is so fluffy, magical, innovative and flawless, that simply no words. “Why is this Sony player worth 6000 rubles, 4 times more expensive than this Xoro player? Opportunities, like, the same? "-" Kaak ?! Don't you understand ?! It's the same (to fold the arms at the breast with a house, to raise the eyes where the Supreme is supposed to have) Sony® ®! ”
“My power supply burned down in Xoro” - “Well, clearly, a poor Chinese hand-made article! Even the power supply can not normally do! "
“I have a Sony power supply burned out” - “Well, clearly, a poor Russian power grid! You probably didn't even use a Sony ™ ® certified UPS! ”

2) Secondly, "blue". This is mainly Southeast Asia. They have a big "minus" . You do not know whether in this particular case you are dealing with rubbish or an excellent product. You have only 1 way to check. Buy and try. There is another "minus". They do not invent. They do not create. They do not explore. They are not up to that. Their task is to take ready, invented and researched, for $ 1000, and release the same in essence, but without “mother-of-pearl buttons”, in a slightly less glossy case and with a little less “blue crystals”, but for $ 100.
And then the “minus” with a smooth movement of the hand turns into a big “plus” . They don’t pay $ 5,000 / month to a copywriter, whose job is to invent which slogan to stick into an advertisement to be launched in 22 languages ​​so as not to be fooled, since there are Arabic reading right to left and Mandarin among languages. common language in the world) with hieroglyphs. They pay $ 100 a month to a worker who collects as much Popcorn for a shift as a Moscow businessman cannot sell for a month. They don’t pay TV channels to interrupt your favorite TV series with a half minute story that “Emma Petrovna, half the bottle is enough!” In the end, it’s you , the buyer, don’t pay TV channel, as well as copywriter, designer, marketoid, analytics and ... a dentist whose services are included in the copywriter, designer and markeid medical insurance.
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3) It all sounds somewhat banal, and you could strain yourself, wondering why I wrote everything said above. And he wrote to make it clear how strange and ridiculous a hybrid is the 3rd type of firms. These are firms that manage to combine the shortcomings of the “white” and “blue” ones . These are “blue” ones who do not invent and create nothing, but simply rivet with hundreds of thousands of good, in principle, apparatuses. But instead of selling them to you for $ 100, they invest in a very serious PR and advertising in order to create an image (the word “image” is not fashionable) of an absolutely “white” company. Then sell you the same devices, but twice as expensive. And if they manage to do this trick (to convince you that they are white and fluffy), then they do not even need to work, optimizing (and, thus, cheapening) the devices of “white” companies: they only have to buy ready-made devices from “blue” ones they have their own emblem (at the sight of which you already have saliva, like Pavlov's dog), multiply the price by 2, and it's in the bag!

BBK is a prime example of a type 3 firm. And I take off in front of these strangers outstanding businessmen hat! They managed a miracle: they managed to make it so that Urry_MPG and a lot of other quite reasonable people are ready to buy this BBK already because it’s BBK, which (quote) “looks much better and less like a soap box and more like what you can put in home theater rack. The fact that the insides of this "similar to the component house. cinema "- this is Popcorn A-100 of 2007, the year of release with the antediluvian IDE interface, it is unlikely that many will think.

I looked for IDE disks at market.yandex.ru and found that with a capacity of 500 GB and more is being sold ... exactly ONE model for 500 GB at the price of 3250 rubles. For comparison - the same drives with SATA interface sell 49 different models, and the 500 GB drive can be bought for 2200 rubles, and for 6000 rubles. You can already buy a 3 times larger disk (1500 GB). So which trashcan will need to look for a replacement disk for the built-in BBK, when you find that 500 GB is not enough for you, or that the pre-installed disk is too noisy?

You have not yet taken a turn for BBK? In vain. Help people. They have a crisis. I really need money. Duan Yongping, the founder of BBK, is only 312nd in the list of the richest people in China. He has only $ 370 million . Can you imagine how hard it is for him?