Investigation: Non-compliance with network access permits and disappearance offline
Author/ IT Times reporter Sun Yan
Editor/ Hao Junhui Sun Yan
"Don't 3999, don't want 2999, as long as you pay for a meal, you can take home a domestic 5G mobile phone with 1024GB memory." In the live broadcast room of platforms such as Douyin, the anchor is hoarse and passionate. These new mobile phones, which look like iPhone 15 and Huawei Pura70, start at 298 yuan.
"I miss you so much, I miss you too much, and that loving heart is still praying to see you again." When people have long forgotten the word "copycat machine", his father's new mobile phone opened Wenxiu (pseudonym), and the mobile phone with Apple appearance, Samsung name, and Huawei account only cost 400 yuan. Every time the fashionable call ringtone on her father's mobile phone rings, she beats the drum in her heart: "Is there a problem with safety?" ”
2008 was the heyday of copycat mobile phones, after experiencing high purchase subsidies from operators, Xiaomi OV and other new mobile phone forces after the price war, copycat mobile phones have disappeared for a long time. Now it is resurrected in the live broadcast room, in addition to the hard-hit area of Douyin and Kuaishou live broadcast rooms, the "hidden corners" of e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, Taobao, and Xianyu are still scattered with copycats under the banner of "domestic 5G mobile phones".
The "IT Times" reporter's investigation found that the license marks of these copycat mobile phones to access the network were not compliant, and multiple copycat live broadcast rooms were suspected of pointing to several same brands, and the "vests" in the live broadcast room were manufactured in batches to reduce the risk of customer complaints being closed and high return rates.
And under the sucker of this copycat machine "octopus" is the low-income people.
As long as 298 yuan "domestic iPhone" to take home
Open Douyin, enter "mobile phone", enter the live channel, every 10 live broadcast rooms, there are eight or nine live broadcast rooms selling copycat mobile phones. Open Kuaishou, type "mobile phone", and the Home is the "domestic iPhone" advertisement.
In the live broadcast room, a number of white-label mobile phones that look like best-selling models such as iPhone 15 and Huawei Pura70 are rotated and displayed...... The unfamiliar name of 5G domestic mobile phone came to the face, and the price was as low as 298 yuan and 388 yuan.
"Today's new account is on the air", "Today's 20th anniversary", "As long as 298 yuan, the price that primary school students can afford, college students play a game, the elderly brush a Douyin, and the super benefits that can't be grabbed by fighting for speed, only today! "Anchors are constantly encouraging consumers to enter the live broadcast room.
When the "IT Times" reporter asked what the main frequency of the mobile phone was, I saw that the anchor opened the mobile phone settings to show the details, and the page showed that it was a Snapdragon 888 ten-core processor with a memory of up to 16GB+1024GB; Is there a guarantee after sale? The anchor promises to pay three for one fake, five-year warranty, one year only replacement without repair, 7 days of unpacking and trial, and seven days of return without reason after playing a second-hand phone; What are the features? The anchor display supports WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, QQ and other software eight opens, one can be used as eight units, can split the screen, can take AI photos, can shoot stars and moons; What is the brand? The anchor said that it is a niche brand produced and sold by itself, and 5G domestic mobile phones.
"It's fake at a glance, 1298 yuan is normal, but what money does it make by selling it for 298 yuan?" Qian Wei (pseudonym), a mobile phone dealer who has been in the industry for decades and has survived the era of copycat machines, was surprised by this.
Do these 100-yuan "domestic iPhones" and "copycat Huawei" really have quality assurance? On social platforms, many bloggers have evaluated these 100-yuan copycat mobile phones, and the results are seriously inconsistent with the propaganda in the live broadcast room: the 168 yuan "domestic iPhone 15" that claims to be able to play "Glory of Kings" is not only very stuck in the game, but also hot; The claimed domestic 5G mobile phone equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 ten-core chip, after it arrived, the chip became the Huben Unisoc T610 4G chip launched by UNISOC in 2019; The phone with 512GB of RAM is only 16GB.
On Sina Black Cat and other complaint platforms, there are 1159 complaints related to "copycat mobile phones", and 1666 complaints related to "fake mobile phones", and the platforms that have been complained about include Douyin, Pinduoduo, Jingdong, Xianyu, Zhuan Zhuan, etc., almost all e-commerce platforms, and there are different degrees of problems in the process of use, among which Douyin and Kuaishou live broadcast rooms are the hardest hit areas, and the buying crowd is mainly the elderly and students.
The cat is tired of accessing the network
The reason why a mobile phone is called a "copycat machine" is usually because it has two characteristics of counterfeiting and poor quality, on the one hand, it imitates the appearance, trademark, product identification, etc. of the brand machine, and on the other hand, it is suspected of false publicity, and the product performance and technical indicators do not meet the national and industry standards. Whether it has a network access license is considered to be a key factor in judging whether it is a "copycat".
In order to dispel consumer concerns, anchors will affix the network access license logo on the back of the prototype and quickly display it in the live broadcast room. However, when the "IT Times" reporter asked in the live broadcast room if the logo could be clearly displayed, the anchor directly banned him.
Through the screenshot of the "Spelling Speed", the reporter found that the "mobile phone network access license" displayed in some live broadcast rooms showed that the manufacturer was "XX Department Store Firm", and the numerical code entered on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's telecommunications equipment network access license authenticity query was displayed incorrectly. In other words, these network access licenses are non-compliant.
Another anchor who sells "the same Huawei Pura" took out the network access license, and the reporter found after checking the authenticity of the telecommunications equipment access permit website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that although the license is real, the mobile phone sold in the live broadcast room is completely different from the mobile phone photo published on the website, and it is obviously a copycat mobile phone under the guise of a real license.
When the reporter consulted a company that handled the terminal network access license as a mobile phone city stall business, and indicated that it was supplied by the Guangdong factory and wanted to make its own brand mobile phone, the staff told the reporter that the mobile phone network access license only needs the product specification and inspection to be submitted, the higher the network standard level, the more expensive the price, for example, the 5G network access license is more expensive than 4G, the price starts at more than 100,000 yuan, and the 5G full Netcom needs about 280,000 yuan. From the perspective of the formal process, it is necessary to prepare relevant technical documents, test reports, enterprise qualification certificates and other documents, and it is necessary to send samples to the designated testing institutions for technical testing to ensure that the products meet the national standards and technical requirements, and the whole process takes several months.
The "Octopus" mode was activated in the live broadcast room
Why do copycat mobile phones use live broadcast to "rebirth"? It's not just the live broadcast platform that has traffic.
On the live broadcast platform, most of the live broadcast rooms are new stores, and most of the sales volume does not exceed 25,000, but the mobile phone style, configuration, and store detail page introduction are very similar.
"IT Times" reporter investigation found that a number of copycat mobile phone live broadcast rooms point to several of the same "brand", and the frequent "brand" names include Lefuer, Ka Liyu, etc., taking Lefuer as an example, the store opening speed and store closure speed of "Lefuer XX flagship store" are very fast. After a day, the number of stores with the prefix "Lefuer" on Douyin has increased from 9 to 11, and the stores that were followed the day before, such as the "Lefuer all-in-one flagship store", have not been searched for this store the next day.
When checking the business licenses of these stores, the reporter found that although the legal representatives are not the same, the registered addresses are concentrated in Tianhe District, Guangzhou City, Zhangdian District, Zibo City, Shandong Province, Lusong District, Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, and Longhua District, Shenzhen.
What is the purpose of opening live broadcast rooms in batches? An industry insider explained that because the live broadcast room is easy to be complained by consumers, the cost of closing and reopening is not high, which is equivalent to a "vest store". And if the store is closed, consumers may not be able to apply for after-sales, and it will not have to bear the loss of high return rates.
Some media have compared it to the "octopus" model, the copycat mobile phone is the "brain", and the live broadcast room is the "tentacles" that stretch out in all directions, even if a tentacle is cut off, it will not shake the entire system, and another live broadcast room can be launched at a low cost. Under the sucker of "Octopus" is low-income people, and the target user portrait is the elderly and students in the sinking market, and this group of people often has a low complaint rate and return rate.
Offline has been gone for 10 years
In offline malls, copycat machines have long disappeared.
Recently, a reporter from "IT Times" made an unannounced visit to Huanlong Communication City near Shanghai Railway Station. Many years ago, it was an important distribution center for copycat machines. Nowadays, when it comes to "the city where the railway station never sleeps", everyone will still associate it with copycat machines and parallel goods.
Today, it's a bleak place.
"Shanghai has been strictly inspected for many years, and copycat machines have long been stopped here, you can go to Shenzhen Huaqiangbei to have a look." "Don't talk about copycat machines, we don't even do the business of wiping edges such as mobile phone installment rental." The bosses of the mobile phone stalls in Huanlong Communication City told reporters that the copycat machine once reached its heyday in 2008, but as the domestic mobile phone became cheaper and cheaper, the copycat machine without market space went downhill, and it disappeared in the past few years.
In the previous series of reports on the 20th anniversary of the founding of the "IT Times" - "Looking Back on 20 Years of Domestic Mobile Phones", a number of mobile phone industry practitioners have mentioned that around 2009, the cost-effective advantage of copycat machines has disappeared under the high purchase subsidies of operators. At that time, the old domestic mobile phone force "China Cool Alliance" (ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, Lenovo) rose through cooperation with telecom operators.
In 2019, Lei Jun said at Xiaomi's ninth anniversary carnival: "In just 9 years, the biggest change we have made is to eliminate China's copycat mobile phones." ”
Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other new domestic mobile phone forces have risen, especially after Xiaomi mobile phones raised the "butcher knife" and triggered multiple rounds of price wars, the price of domestic brand smartphones has been beaten below 800 yuan, and there is no profit margin for copycat machines.
According to the "IT Times" reporter's observation, the digital market near the Shanghai railway station has shrunk in a large area, and the owners of offline stores who are still "staying" are mostly engaged in second-hand mobile phone trading, mobile phone repair, SLR camera accessories and other businesses. Businesses such as brand new mobile phones and mobile phone accessories have long been overwhelmed by the "tens of billions of subsidies" of e-commerce platforms. "I can't even sell mobile phone accessories." A stall owner who has been in Huanlong Communication City for 14 years said.
After many years of offline crackdown, online platforms have become the "hidden corner" of copycat machines.