>There's definitely a cultural thing at play This is not a cultural thing. It's just a stage in the country's industrial development. Once upon a time (when mo

>There's definitely a cultural thing at play This is not a cultural thing. It's just a stage in the country's industrial development. Once upon a time (when most people on HN were not alive) Japan was the country that rolled out cheap knock offs. Then, once they became good enough at it, they graduated to the stage of out-innovating the industries they were previously rolling out cheap knock offs for. Many western countries including America followed the same cycle during the industrial revolution(s). >That being said, I think it's a losing strategy in the long run for consumer devices manufacturers It's not a long run strategy for China any more than it was for Japan. It's not even a strategy, really - it's more of a "market configuration", actually. Chinese companies have a currency advantage but less capital and brand equity available to take riskier (innovative) gambles. So it makes sense to go the cheap knockoff route. Once they have brand equity, capital reserves and have lost their currency advantage they will out-innovate or they will die. They're already a long way along this road. A "Xiaomi" would never have happened 5 years ago. The idea that a Chinese company could rival the industrial design of an Apple phone was seen as something close to laughable. 10 years ago they could barely even consider designing a smartphone at all.