The good news is that when you buy a piece of wearable tech, it’s probably legit and not a cheap Chinese knockoff. The bad news is that means the counterfeiters aren’t seeing enough demand for wearables to bother with them.
CNN’s got a really interesting report about electronics counterfeiters in China. It seems that in all of Shenzen, manufacturing hub for legit and not-so-legit electronics, no one is making fake wearable tech simply because there’s no market. The story focuses on Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, which may be a bad example because it’s largely seen as a failing product. With iPhones, apparently, there were fakes being sold even before the real thing shipped — and the success of Nokia counterfeits have been known to anticipate whether the real thing would succeed in the market.
Out of 20 shops visited by CNN, not one sold fake Samsung Gear smart watches and none could offer leads on where to find copies. All these 20 shops sold the smart watch, out of hundreds perhaps thousands, of market booths that didn’t sell Samsung’s Gear. However, many of the same shops openly promoted copies of Apple’s latest iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy Note III — models also launched in September — suggesting the counterfeiters are quick to copy if they see market potential.