[r00fus]

The counter examples are legion, but Apple's future growth is dominated by Asia (esp. China).

Western companies selling (likely chinese-made) goods to China without investing in serious design, development and marketing (not to mention ecosystem and support) are not going to have much of a future, I agree.

[farlington]

Oh, absolutely, in the present and for the immediate future. But the not so distant future, like five or ten years out? Do you think the lead in terms of design and marketing is less surmountable than the hardware design and manufacturing?

I admit to not really knowing much about the Chinese market. But a low-cost home grown tablet brand competing against a foreign competitor, running Baidu Yi or whatever else emerges, is going to have certain undeniable advantages—just like Baidu, Renren, et al have advantages and have in many ways caught up to their western equivalents.

[nooneelse]

I'm curious about the other direction. Will the little scrappy Chinese companies be able to win over a significant fraction of Western customers, or will brand-recognition act as to much of a deterrent against them?

[TylerE]

I'd imagine logistics would play into it also. Not just shipping, but things like UL certification. When your're working on the sort of razor thin margins they certainly are at that price point...

[patrickgzill]

Check home appliances. Haier, despite sounding German, is Chinese.

[gcb]

My motto when buying Chinese stuff is to steer clear of brands that try to be fake.

Such as not buying Hyundai because their logo tries to mimic Honda's.

[tikhonj]

That isn't a very good example because Hyundai now makes some rather good cars and isn't Chinese. It's also a bit like avoiding Porsches because their logo looks like Ferrari's.

[marrick66]

Last time I checked, Hyundai was Korean. Plus, they have a decent reputation.

[DrStalker]

A stylized "H" isn't exactly a unique logo idea, and the cars themselves don't look similar other than the commonality shared by broad categories such as "basic four door compact car"

[gcb]

wasn't implying Hyundai is Chinese. was two example of the same mentality.

and yes, Hyundai is a good brand now. they even styled the H diferently, but their first cars, e.g. the pony, was a copy of Honda's offering at the time. and you never saw a pony because it couldn't even pass US emission regulations of the time. if it's an OK brand now, it's because it got a lot of money from people that couldn't afford a honda before.

anyway, to keep the analogy in context, i'd buy a huawei device, but not other brands that have a plastic case and/or brand name that is almost the same as a linksys one