“We also spoke about the disruption in the value chain with new players entering the market and possibly changing the consumer value proposition - ie, the value proposition to the customer may no longer be focused on the moment of the sale but on the value at each point for the consumer - and if the OTA model was under threat.”
Yeoh Siew Hoon
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iPhone clones, tigers paws, penises and Titanic - all for a price Yeoh Siew Hoon goes shopping in Haikou and has her eyes opened to the new world of clones and the Dark Ages of animal parts.
It is said that in China, you can buy anything. That would seem to be the case in Haikou, capital of Hainan island. I popped into the local electronics store which turned out to be a massive, five-storey place that would send any gadget hound into orgiastic heaven. It makes Sim Lim Centre in Singapore look like a kindergarten. There are mobile phones of every shape, size and colour. From foreign brands to local names, they've got the latest here. The local versions are so cheap that you understand why every Chinese will eventually have a mobile phone.
Willy Foo, photographer and technopreneur, who was with me was like a kid let loose in a candy store. He bought a 3G USB, which he says he hasn't been able to find in Singapore, for RMB80. "It's faster and better than anything else in the market," he said, as he clutched it to his breast. We then found Sennheiser headphones which were going for US$2 each. To add to my list of "nice to have but I don't think I will ever use them" gadgets, I bought a "spy pen" which takes photos, records video and stores 4GB of data for about US$30. And oh yes, it writes too. It is when you are in a store like this that you understand just why China is a market unlike any other when it comes to technology adoption by its citizens - it is accessible, available and affordable on a mass scale. And who cares if you can't access Google or Facebook, there are plenty of local sites for the Chinese to get access to information and young folks tell me they know ways round the restrictions anyway. On the third floor, we found shops selling DVDs - entire TV series of any American or British drama you'd care to name - for RMB8 each. There was a compilation of 50 Oscar-winning movies for RMB10. For James Cameron's fans, there's a compilation of all his movies and we also found a compilation of gay movies, among them, Brokeback Mountain. All that content being dumped for tuppence and that's for those of us who still pay for our movies. What an old-fashioned notion that is in a world where you can watch movies for nothing? Step outside the IT store however, walk a few metres and you feel like you have been plunged into not just an old-fashioned world but something from the Dark Ages.
Also costing (slightly) more than James Cameron's movies are firecrackers and fireworks which are openly sold on the streets, it still being Chinese New Year when I was there. I lost count of the firework displays I saw. Here, everyone can have their own fireworks party, just like a iPhone clone. |
I asked after the iPhone clone. It looks and feels like one. It doesn't work as smoothly as one though - but for the price of about RMB300 (about US$40), what do you expect? There's an iPhone lookalike under a local brand name, it does everything the iPhone does, and connects with Chinese social networking sites.
On the sidewalks, peddlers sell anything from tiger's paws, bears paws to male animal genitals and horns. I wonder how much they cost - probably a bit more than James Cameron's movies.