Comment by will y. on June 12, 2010 at 9:19pm

yeah, that happens. Economically there's no real downside (except for chinese people and non-chinese merchants), it just means cheaper products for the rest of us.

Moderator Comment by Alex on June 12, 2010 at 10:09pm

I think that eventually there will be a downside when all of the non Chinese companies have to close down. China is really good at copying, and making things affordable (sometimes at the sacrifice of quality) but where will the new designs and innovations come from?

I may be wrong but I cant think of a good airframe made in china that was not copied from another design. Basicaly all the cheap aircraft in china are clones of others. So perhaps in future we will never really find any good new airframes/ innovations? But then again the reduction in the costs to get started into RC is becoming so low that more and more people are getting involved that perhaps this will be good for industry.

Comment by will y. on June 12, 2010 at 10:10pm

There will always be a demand for new designs, and therefore always a supply for new designs. Progress has never stopped on a product due to market shift.

Comment by Whooper on June 12, 2010 at 10:15pm

Referring to the link, I think there is still a niche for local hobby shops if they can distinguish themselves with good service & support.

Comment by Angus Peart on June 12, 2010 at 10:21pm

Here's a more accurate representation, it shows the continual rise of (now) hobbyking, by adding in their 2 other previous names.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=tower+hobbies,+hobbyking,+hobbycity,...

Comment by Lew Payne on June 12, 2010 at 10:45pm

Very interesting... thank you, guys!

Comment by Jason Lyons on June 13, 2010 at 2:06am

@ Alex

The reason that there are real no innovative airframes coming out of China is that there is no incentive for them to do it. Why spend time and money on R&D when you can reverse engineer someone elses design, manufacture it for cheaper and still make money? I think that if name brand hobby manufacturers started closing down, then the Chinese would actually have an incentive to start coming out with more original products.

Comment by ionut on June 13, 2010 at 3:30am

You can compare:rc planes,rc cars,rc helicopters :)

Or even better:us,europe,china

Comment by Leon on June 13, 2010 at 4:44am

OK, chinese products are now just copies of good products designed somewhere else. But remember the history of the Japanese industry. They began to copy occidental products several decades ago, in a very efficient way (just like China today), and a few years later, they designed very inovative products.

Therefore, I think that China will soon propose inovative products. We have to wait mabe 10 years.

Leon.

Comment by Howard Gordon on June 13, 2010 at 8:49am

+1 what Leon said, though it won't be 10 years. Chinese engineers are already demonstrating significant innovation in other industry segments such as telecom and computing. Many engineers who were trained and started their careers in the US are returning to China to build businesses, and the long-term impact of this on Chinese innovation will be huge.

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