Reply to "Any comments on these Al heads?"

With my current employer I have had the opportunity to spend time in China. My take-away is that when presented the choice between a Chinese product and a "western" company I would always reject the Chinese. Even if this means paying a higher price. For me it is nothing to do with quality, but cultural.

The Chinese culture is completely open to copying/backwards engineering or outright ripping off someone’s design. To them is something to be expected. Walking down streets of China you can find all types of copies, fake or pirated goods.

While short term this is great for the consumers, the longer term impacts are killer. Take the knocked off heads. After spending perhaps $100K+ on molds/patterns, tooling and flow tests some Chinese company copies the product and sells the "same design/product" for less. For the original designer their entire R&D is wiped out. The original company cannot afford new product development cost. The results is another company out of business.

For now, China is the center for cheap labor. As with any developing nation, they are building their technology base so that one day they will have the internal skills to build, design and develop more technically complex products to compete in the world market. While this is good for any developing nation, the Chinese ripping off design and directly selling them on the open market is an approach that is a double edge sword. By taking in US dollars for cheap goods that is a direct copy or forgery from another manufacturer they gain knowledge so that one day they might be able to develop the complete product.

I first hand witnessed 4 different Chinese companies backwards engineering a complex software product in less than 4 years. In China, the copied code is the standard and the original US company that spent the R&D dollars to develop the unique capabilities and processes is not competitive in China. Why, because the US product costs more. Humm, perhaps the higher price might be the R&D dollars that must be allocated to the product cost. A cost not required for a copy. A real impact on a company’s interest in being innovative to only have someone copy and undercut the market.

I chose to support the company that took the innovation to create unique products. I vote with my pocket book. Why should I help fund a company bent on copying designs that longer term will reduce my choices for unique and innovated products?