Bunnie Huang on China's "Shanzai" Mash-Up Design Shops

saccade.com writes "Bunnie (of XBox hacking and Chumby fame) has written an insightful post about how a new phenomena emerging out of China called 'Shanzai' has impacted the electronics business there. A new class of innovators, they're going beyond merely copying western designs to producing electronic "mash-ups" to create new products. Bootstrapped on small amounts of capital, they range from shops of just a few people to a few hundred. They rapidly create new products, and use an "open source" style design community where design ideas and component lists are shared."

Shanzhai, not Shanzai

[jsse]

Literally 'Shanzhai' means a fortress on a mountain in Chinese, but it's a equivalent to 'garage' in western terms of innovation process. Both means making things at low cost, labour intensive environment, but doesn't necessarily refer to making things in a real garage or a actual mountain fortress.

Often case the term 'Shanzhai' production implies 'cheap and dirty, but work'. Say, we procure electronic parts from a 'Shanzhai' factory, we expect them to be cheap but not with very high quality.

SShan zhai bandit phones and popular youth culture

[BananaPeel]

For those intereseted there is small write up with a few pics on the cultural aspects of Shan zhai on:
http://chinayouthology.com/blog/?p=369 [chinayouthology.com]

Talking to friends in China last week "Shan zhai" anything is a hot word in china now, being applied to mobile phone, fashion, whatever.

While I was there I offered over half a dozen iphone look alikes which can be bought from around 1000 yuan (~£110)

Re:Shanzhai, not Shanzai

[gzipped_tar]

Shanzhai in Chinese refers to a camp or basement of mountain bandits in the original meaning.

SMALL-amount manufacturing exists

[KlaymenDK]

There are already a number of small-amount manufacturers, as you call them. Some are prototyping shops, some will build any number of items for you.

http://www.emachineshop.com/ [emachineshop.com]
http://www.tapplastics.com/ [tapplastics.com]
http://www.pad2pad.com/ [pad2pad.com]
http://www.olimex.com/ [olimex.com]
http://www.eurocircuits.com/ [eurocircuits.com]
(no affiliation to any of them)

But you have to supply a sellable idea that's not been done yet, and bear the cost of iterating the bugs out of the design.

Also, and more to the point, the burden of IP is on your shoulders; at least, they're just punching out parts on your behalf and AFAIK that's not been contested in court as of yet.

Re:Open source capitalism? o_O

[Anonymous Coward]

No, socialism would be having the government demand that programmers write software for the greater good or be jailed. There is nothing anti-capitalist about open source. It simply turns the profit model from distribution and licensing back to performance and production. If I want software, I can pay somebody to write it. They get the money and I get the software I want, and if it's FOSS, that just means it isn't exclusive. That doesn't make it any less capitalistic or free market.

Personally I don't think any kind of protectionism is really free market, whether we're talking tariffs or patents. In a truly free market, whomever CAN produce the best product, SHOULD. Regardless of 'who thought of it first' or 'they took our jobs!' [southparkstudios.com]

Re:Smart; Very smart

[Hal_Porter]

Several thoughts;

1. Our IP is getting in our way. That is why our forefathers created SHORT TERM IP rights. Now, it is just a money maker for a bit longer, but is KILLING the west.

IP rights have their uses. I happen to know that China has cloned processors and that are unlicensed. Inside China anything you buy will use one of those. For the export market Chinese companies have to import legal components from somone who has a license. So if you work for US processor manufacturer for example, IP law is protecting your job. I suspect that if you have an engineering job in a rich country, IP licensing is one of the things that pays your salary.

I think Bunnie is confused to what a "mash-up" is

[mbourgon]

"I heard a local comment about how great it was that the shanzhai could not only make an iPhone clone, they could improve it by giving the clone a user-replaceable battery[...]I can't help but wonder out loud if mashup in hardware is all that bad."

Adding a user-replaceable battery does not make it a mashup. The combination cell-phone/racecar, sure. But that? That's just a knock-off.

Re:Capitalistic open source super cool

[manekineko2]

Maybe you should read the article before you rant.

"Interestingly, the shanzhai employ a concept called the âoeopen BOMâ â" they share their bill of materials and other design materials with each other, and they share any improvements made; these rules are policed by community word-of-mouth, to the extent that if someone is found cheating they are ostracized by the shanzhai ecosystem."

It's actually kinda like the GPL. The Shanzhai guys aren't going to share their stuff with you, because you're not in the ecosystem and not gonna share with them.