As phone companies ramp up for one of the biggest and most competitive seasons ever, Nokia faces a new fight as counterfeit manufacturers continue to increase the quality and undetectability of their replica devices in time for the release of the manufacturer’s most expensive phone lines.
Distributors and dealers who have seen the latest fakes have expressed their concerns about the difficulty of telling them apart from the originals. Even some veteran sellers of the products have been fooled, if recent statements given are accurate.
The most recent fakes to surface are the £700 Nokia Arte Sapphire and the new £500 Nokia N96 which, according to sources, are already ‘flooding the market’. Fake models of both phones are being sold for £200 to UK dealers (one of the signs of a possible fakery at work is a too good to be true price).
One retailer was quoted as saying: “The fakes are amazing – there is no way I could tell they are not real and I have been in this industry for 10 years. The menu systems are identical, and they have the same ringtones.”
Concerns are focused on distributors mixing counterfeit stock with genuine products to reduce their prices and/or increase their average margins, in a time when some shops and wholesalers are struggling. Even store staff at the big retail chains have been fooled (and subsequently angered) by the quality of the new phony phones.
One staff member at a major retail chain even warned retailers about a new and devious development: “Customers have started coming into the store to take out a contract, and then returned it a few days later. But they’ve swapped it with a fake, and kept the original. It is very difficult for us to tell.”
It might be a good idea for shop owners to monitor this situation closely, to avoid being swindled, until this rising wave of fakes subsides.
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