“From futuristic Google Glass headsets to smart watches like Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, wearable gadgets are billed as the next big thing in technology,” Johan Nylander and Justus Krüger report for CNN. “But China’s tech counterfeiters — notorious for having a nose for what’s hot and what’s not — appear for now at least to be giving wearable technology the cold shoulder in what one expert calls a ‘serious warning signal’ for market players.”
“One might argue, if there is one thing worse than being copied, that is to be ignored. And that seems to be the case with Samsung’s new Galaxy Gear smart watch — one of the first wearable devices to be made commercially available and as such an indicator for the emerging category,” Nylander and Krüger report. “A visit to the shops of Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei commercial district — a tightly packed group of malls surrounded by high rises that form the epicenter of China’s trade in electronic knock-offs — suggests demand for Samsung’s smart watch is ice-cold. ‘You won’t find any copies of the smart watch here. I’ve never seen or heard of any,’ said a young man who was busy shipping off boxes, that he said were filled with counterfeit mobile phones, at a local logistics center. ‘Thinking about it, I’ve never even seen anyone wear one,’ he added.”
“The device was conspicuous by its absence in Huaqiangbei’s market halls, logistic companies and workshops,” Nylander and Krüger report. “‘I’ve never seen a knock-off Gear in this whole town,’ said a young woman working in a shop full of Samsung products. Her shop is one of the few outlets that sell the real Gear but she said ‘they don’t sell well.’ ‘[Counterfeiters] don’t care about the Gear as consumer demand is too weak,’ said another shop assistant in his early twenties, who was selling a number of what he said were real Samsung products, but not the smart watch. ‘We don’t sell it anymore. It was not popular.’ Out of 20 shops visited by CNN, not one sold fake Samsung Gear smart watches and none could offer leads on where to find copies.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Separately, they’re just stupid, but if U.S. Federal Puppet Denise Cote ever strapped on a Samsung Galaxy Gear, the resulting supernova of stupidity would obliterate the planet.
[Attribution: BGR. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
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