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Who is teaching consumers the difference between real and fake Nokia mobiles?

Categories: Devices
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 10:52 AM

Real and knock-off 8800′s from Chengdu’s Tai Shen Lan Lu Market (photos taken late last year).
A used original about 220 Yuan, a fake with Nokia logo about 900 Yuan,
and a version with identical industrial design but no logo 50 Yuan. The
power of the brand? Does the same apply to your brand?

Incidentally, my translator & guide for the day correctly
guessed the real from the fake with her eyes (literally) shut by
listening to the sound and feeling the sliding mechanism, but with her
eyes open she considered the fake to be the real thing. Not exactly
surprising considering that she’d not held one in her hands before.
This is where I should probably write something about the need to educate consumers. However, in what contexts does educating consumers on the value of the original drive up the value of the fake?

Source: Jan Chipchase

In my country we don’t really have this problem, I never knew it was this bad in Asia. Nokia is huge in China so this kind of worries me. Jan brings up a good point, how does a consumer tell? Shiny stickers sealing a package only go so far.

I wouldn’t be worried about education driving up the cost of the fake, educating consumers costs money and in turn that drives up the price of the real thing!

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About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Darla

    Actually, you would be surprised how many businesses in NYC have been doing this. I’ve heard horror stories about the BT headsets out of this place in NYC. He blames the distributor.

  • Moammar

    Did Fake Mobile have same functions :?: :???:

  • kidfromasia

    forget about brands, i dont want to pay extra for tha brand name. as long as the fake has better function and extras im down to buy it.

  • Raymond

    If they are fake they can do nothing, eg. the fake N95 doesn’t even run on S60 3RD FP1, it runs on some random os and is very easy to tell the difference, the fake N73 looks really different.