The Evolution of Shanzhai Phones and Their Cultural Roots

A phone with flashy bright lights and eight speakers. A phone with a massive battery. Falsely labeled of course. Olympics-branded phones. Cigarette pack phones. And of course, the "Motorpola". The mid-2000s saw the wild and wooly rise of a bandit phone industry in the People's Republic of China. Fueled by incredible consumer demand for mobile phones, a faulty regulatory system and a Taiwanese chipmaker. Whatever happened to those companies? Why couldn't they compete? In today's video, the mid-2000s and the wave of Chinese bandit phones.

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