I had my own personal example of what the Chinese can achieve recently, and why Australian businesses should be worried:
After purchasing my Iconia tablet, I wanted to pick up a micro HDMI cable to enable me to hook it up to my fullHD TV.
I checked out local shops such as JB Hifi, Dick Smith etc and was surprised to find they don't even stock them. When I did finally hunt them down, I was confronted with a price of $59.95 for a 6 foot cable.
Embracing the power of the mobile internet via my newly acquired tablet, I checked out ebay and found the same thing from a seller in China for $3.95 delivered!
Honestly, it beggars belief that they can possibly be making a profit from that. Surely it costs more than $3.95 just for the international postage. One week later, the parcel arrived and the cable works as promised and I even got a paper pattern to stick on our window for 'good luck all year'. Australian bricks and mortar stores just can't compete with that! In fact even the online ones would struggle.
I think part of the problem is that you have the JBs and Harvey Normans of the world trying to sell those Monster branded HDMI cables with gold-plated connectors for $200 and then are offering "standard" cables still at inflated prices. It seems this is carried over to micro-HDMI cables too.
ReplyDeleteYou can easily go to any independent computer shop and they will have cheaper cables. I picked up a ten metre HDMI cable for $25 which I thought was fairly reasonable (and somewhat inline with your Chinese purchase).