Region Locks Are Stupid
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ต.ค. 2023
- Samsung, Motorola, and other cell services shut off customers’ grey market phones in Mexico.
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Hi, Mexican person here, there’s not a definitive reason as to why this started to happen, Mexico’s government has already called out these manufacturers to revert this “grey market phone blockages”, and I believe most of them have already issued some “statement/apology” about reverting the bans. What people have speculated as the reason for all this happening is the fact that from around 2013 or so, a lot of “grey market” online stores have popped up here in Mexico, which became pretty popular (I mean, who wouldn’t want to get a brand new phone 30 to 40% cheaper from the crazy regular prices for phones here in Mexico), which has made mobile service provider companies in Mexico (mostly Telcel and AT&T, the 2 biggest ones here) unable to compete with them, stockpiling a bunch of old phones that they cannot sell anymore, so most likely these were the ones behind all of these, since is pretty rarely that people actually buys from the brand’s online stores here in Mexico, but it’s just speculation, maybe the brands wanted to sell more phone directly from their web stores as well, who really knows, but it definitely wasn’t something related to the Government.
ZTE first started blocking the Phones and then it followed Motorola, later Samsung and it was coming Xiaomi and Oppo.
The speculation came saying that Telcel was doing some type of agreement with companies to block their phones, but there hasn't been any confirmation of this. But is still bad
Phone Manufacturers started using government posts that “Talked” about the grey market as a backup to “Justify” their blocks, not to mention that most of their excuses were “we want to protect the consumer”
Thanks for your perspective
Yes, thanks for your input on this. I hate that your Northern neighbors haven’t emphasized Spanish enough-if not for any other reason-to learn how to listen and cooperate with each other just a little bit better.
Sounds like it's time for AT&T to be no more.
@EnjoyCocaColaLight AT&T Client support is as useful as chatting with a person on Twitter/X
Can we talk about the fact that those brands can disable any phone at any time ??
A bit late for that one. At this point it's already horse armor
Androids wont get software updates later on unless is to brick the phone
@@qunas101 Nope it isn't. you can use a custom ROM. people really need to start figuring this out and start supporting those projects.
They might still be able to disable it if they start more invasive things to their phones, but there are alternative companies popping up like the fairphone. it's still not amazing now since it's overpriced but boy are they getting so much closer with every version.
@@edd9581 apple has been slowing down older phones for decades now too
The EU would put a stop to that asap
Region locks exist for the sole and only purpose to facilitate price discrimination. Why buy full price in America if you can buy a game “in Russia” for less money? But I agree it’s an antiquated idea
Also to annoy consumers who can’t find the “group” that sells what they want or to push them to overpriced bs if they can find it.
It helps when the average wages are far lower due to conversion rates in other countries - if everything was the US price it would mean most people in poorer countries could not buy it outright.
@@dakrashayashi2796 Spot on. To add to that, even if a company's CEO was altruistic and wanted to charge the same prices across all countries, their company would likely lose money in all the expensive countries and have to exit those markets because the _cost of doing business_ is massively higher due to taxes, labor, real estate, transportation, etc. It's a chicken-and-egg problem where you can't lower the prices of something drastically until all the related prices (which you don't control) come down. Of course prices do change in reality, just more slowly.
Digital goods (software, streaming media, etc.) are less affected by this but physical electronics most certainly are.
While I don't want poorer countries to miss out it should not be different prices for different people, we are getting into one of the problems with capitalism
And I would rather this practice was outlawed and we could then address any other issues
Companies may just offer the device at the lower price in all regions 🤷🏻♂️ or might pull out of the poorer region allowing new companies to fill the gap in the market eventually resulting in more competition
@@adversHandle This is a very poorely thought out idea. For digital, you have a case. But anything physical you don't. Any place in the world has a wide and varying range of costs just to get their products to any given location. Not just by region, but by country, state, province, and territory. Factor that in with required compliance and import laws most countries have and this leads to a very different range of pricing. Also many companies and purveyors change 1st world countries more, or offer a slight discount to poorer countries who wouldn't be able to buy the goods at all if they had to pay for it at an equal price. This isn't an issue with capitalisim. You'd have the same issues in ANY economic system. Yes, some companies do push how much customers are will to pay in 1st world countries. But that's a two way street where consumers can choose another option, or to not buy the product. Hence Apple fans spending way more than they should around the world for a product without significant innovation or change to qualify the price tag. Same with Nvidia. In the poorer countries, they might end up leaving the market. But that wouldn't always induce competition. Even basic competition requires initial capital(something these countries lack) and reasonable profit margins to allow for a sustainable business(which is extremely hard for local/regional companies to achieve entirely on their own(due to a lack of development ).
I’m from Mexico. The government actually did something that started this, but it was purposefully misinterpreted by the manufacturers to block those phones. The ones who can actually block the grey market phones are the phone plan companies, and not the manufacturers, so the government called the manufacturers to stop, as they’re not actually allowed to do that.
The video’s portrayal of the gray market is too ominous, but the reality is less complicated. Consider this scenario: you purchase a Samsung cellphone from Walmart or Amazon or you cross the border into the us buy a phone and comeback to Mexico, only to receive a notification that your phone is from the gray market, and that it will be blocked.
In Mexico, when brands import goods, they often include taxes (both sales and import) in the price, along with an additional 20% increase as a safety net against currency devaluation. This results in electronics and cellphones being 20-30% more expensive in Mexico. Consequently, consumers seek out the best deals they can find.
Retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and others like chines stores have started importing their own cellphones from the US or China. They pay all necessary taxes but do not increase prices due to currency concerns. This practice doesn’t sit well with the Mexican headquarters of these brands because they lose sales to their US counterparts.
To regain control, these brands tried to block these imports. Fortunately, regulators stepped in to prevent this, and now these brands are in damage control mode.
>regulators stepped in to prevent this, and now these brands are in damage control mode
PROFECO too stronk
Exactly! I was looking for a comment explaining the gray market. Thank you so much 💯
Same thing in Serbia, but not the same reasons, assholes own everything and it's basically one bih shop parading as 5. Electronics over here are insanely expensive, and things like GPUs for example literally never drop in price. But approximately the same 30% more expensive than other places in Europe, in some insane cases even double.
This depicts the current situation. Nothing related to the Cartel or shady stuff. Also, cellphone brands have to certify their devices (NOM) that works as expected in the Mexican networks and regulations. And this cost money.
Grey market imports don’t do this, they will import and sell “global versions”, but it’s not certified that it will work 100%.
But people prefer to take the risk for a 30-40% discount rather than full price at retail stores.
@@FerretySatzumathere are no hardware localisations for phones anymore.
So the international version works just as well as any “localized” version.
Especially as any manufacturer just tells you what bands they use
I work at a repair shop, it’s extremely easy to spoof IMEI. Half our customers are people taking phones to Mexico 🇲🇽
sounds like their chat was just parroting what they said lol.
Also, wouldn't you be able to avoid having your device disabled with a custom ROM in general? ofc official support might be an issue though.
Let's hope Mexico didn't resort to IMEI registration / whitelist like in my country. It's horrible.
@@smug_slime Indonesia?
How do you know what to set the spoofed IMEI to?
@@WowReallyWhoDoesThatnormally you have a "loaner" phone. I did it once to get a sprint galaxy s3 onto virgin mobile like 10+ years ago. Just used my old evo 3d from vm and swapped the imei o the s3
Imagine it happened in Europe some 5-10 years ago when like half of the population would gray import xiaomi, lenovo or some no names from aliexpress before they released them officially in the EU hahaha Back then there was a HUGE price difference and only thanks to aliexpress the smartphone prices started falling in Europe! The difference was so great I remember being split between buying a brand new, mid spec lenovo from China or 4 year old, mid-high end motorola - I could not belive the Chinese phones weren't some kind of scum, they were just way too cheap...
it is funny that both of those companies are the same nowadays lol, but i remember those days, i had a lenovo phone and all my family had xiaomis because they only cost like $100 for a modern looking phone
And now the CCP has your data. And so does the USA
Motorola isn't a Chinese company.
Nevermind region locks. What about 'unlocked' phones that re-lock to networks. And if they are MVNO networks they may not even have a department for unlocking phones. Its insanity.
If brands wanted to end the grey market they could do one simple thing: price parity between regions. For example. Here in Mexico when the S22 Ultra was launched, the lowest price was an equivalent of 1600 USD, while the price in the US was 1199USD. Now that the new models are about to come out, I see that in the US there are sales where you can get it even cheaper, while in Mexico is the exact same price, and with the current exchange rate between MX pesos and USD the equivalent is closer to 1700USD. Meanwhile in the gray market you can get the same S22 Ultra for the equivalent of 890USD. So a middle-class person who wants a phone, where do you think is getting it?
And the worst part is that this disparity does not apply only to cellphones, but every product "imported" from the US (Electronics, tools, clothing). I've discussed with my family and we came to the conclusion that is cheaper for us to save our Chrismas Bonus for 3-4 years, travel to the US (with hotel and food), and buy every clothing and electronics we can than to buy the same things here in Mexico.
how much has that got to do with tariffs and taxes, don't blame the company if your government is making it that much more expensive
@@mcbean1 If I ordered a cellphone from the US and paid sales taxes in the US, plus shipping and import taxes in my country, even then, most of the times it still be cheaper than the official stores. You cant make me believe the companies have to pay more in taxes for each phone imported than I'd do on my own.
Plus the fact than even after the new model is announced and available, the old model is still full price as if it was new. That's pure greed.
@@ExcelionYogi What are you talking about, of course a company trying to make profit is going to be taxed higher than 1 person. This happens all the time, the point is that a corporation will have more margin to pay meaning the local government makes more money, that's why they tax higher and or impose tariffs. You clearly don't understand international economics nor business.
@@ExcelionYogi Same for Brazil, here in Brazil the M2 Mac mini starts at 7500BRL About 1500USD, in the US the base Mini Costs 600USD about 2970BRL, that is 4530BRL less than Apple Brasil Price, that's why I imported my Mini and payed less than buying from apple brasil, even paying the 60% import tax and shipping.
@@mcbean1"you clearly do not understand" is gaslighting 101.
Regardless of legality, if companies and govt create a situation where it's multiple times cheaper (or more affordable) to buy a product somewhere else, they will always create grey market in one way or another. Brazil is a good example: A $600(~half minimum wage) graphics card becomes a R$6000(6 times minimum wage) card. You can't stop illegal or second hand markets from sprouting under such ridiculous circumstances.
The fact that multi-billion companies can 1. disable phones anytime they want and 2. abuse vulnerable consumers as much as possible to reach their growth goals is nothing short of disgusting.
Grey markets are simply the result of this insane profit-driven world we are living in, and there is no good solution to them.
Agree, the same stuff happens with cars from the US in Latin America, sometimes it is between 40%-75% cheaper to buy a car in the US and pay the thousands of dollars in shipment and import taxes than it is just going to a car dealership and buying the same model, regional pricing was born of a legitimate reason but manufacturers and distributors in actuality use it to price gouge naive people from those countries.
without the profit driven world you wouldn't have the smartphones in the first place and please "vulnerable consumers" are you seriously suggesting that these people thought they were buying from a legitimate store...? They knew full well they were getting something a little grey and therein which lies the risk.
Your multi billion companies only work to give you the products you demand as long as they can keep making profits, if that means they have to enforce legitimate regions laws, so be it.
@@mcbean1 get out of your bubble and improve your terrible takes. Of course a company would still be able to provide this technology, even if it grew at sustainable rates. A company can be profit driven without being absolutely immoral on its practices worldwide. If companies can't really grow in a sustainable way because of this unattainable exponential year-on-year growth expectation, it's up to govts around the world to create protections for their citizens. You have no clue how simple and tech unaware consumers can be when acquiring products, specially from poor countries. Tech literate consumers can protect themselves in some ways, poor customers cannot really understand the difference between grey, black or whatever market.
There is no excuse for companies preying on people that cannot protect themselves, and your exacerbated individualism doesn't really add anything to defend them either.
@@PuntiS
blah blah blah clearly you don't understand basic economics.
poor consumers are not dumb, they know what they are getting, don't diminish their intelligence.
preying? they are just enforcing legitimate laws, again don't act like these consumer don't know what's going on, they don't just mistaken a cheaper non official iPhone as the real thing, they knew something is sus and there in which lies the risk
Nothing is stopping them buying legit, they just want cheaper, which is fine, but that comes at a cost.
@@mcbean1 Economics major here. I do agree with you that companies seek profit, there is an interesting analogy that goes something like: The butcher does not sell meat because it wants to feed people, he sells it so that he can survive, but through that action he benefits the society by providing food.
One of the main problems of economics as a science is that it tries to bridge a gap between social and exact sciences thorugh describing human behaviors as math equations. The issue is that when you create an equation, you are actually assuming that the agents in the economy are actually logical, and humans are bad at being purely logical. So while I understand what you mean by not diminishing the intelligence of consumers, its not wise to assume they know a lot about technical aspects, to a regular person a phone is a phone. Maybe you know someone that buys a cheap phone every year instead of buy a flagship phone that will last longer and end up saving in the long run?
Regarding the extreme prices in Brazil, as Linus said, "A gaming pc in Brazil is an status symbol" and I am assuming he meant a gaming pc which can run maybe old triple A's @ 1440p 144hz (maybe I'm aiming too high). We can understand "status symbols" as part of a luxury market, the thing about luxury is that artifical scarcity drives the price up and there are few brands competing. The brazillian taxing for tech and imported good ends up being the artificial engine behind driving consumer good to become luxury goods, that is items with a heavy nominal markup and relatively low volume circulating because not many people can buy. (also, low volume circulation usually means a maket scarce in competition)
I don't think we can pin the blame on either consumers, government or brands/companies, its a systemic issue that feeds itself and is the perfect soil for a grey market to sprout.
For more on this topics I would sugest researching about Behavioral Economics and Microeconomics of luxury.
When it comes to downloads or streaming, geo restrictions just promote and support piracy. "Not available in your region" is basically an ad for Pirate Bay 😂
Sadly this is not mainly because the companies dont't want you to see the show, it is mainly because the broadcasting rights and other "legacy laws and practices" used by the TV companies that blocks them. Unless the wast majority of the globe reviews their laws regarding TV, Movies and other Intelectual property laws this will be a issue (that is why they are mainly not blocking VPNs, but go after account sharing)
As somebody who moved countries as a kid, region locking DVDs and games was _the_ most frustrating thing. Like I either can't use stuff bought locally or I can't use stuff I had before we moved. And this is between Australia and Europe, hardly differently priced places!
they had different licensing and ratings system hence the need to differentiate
The region locking in DVDs & Blu-rays drives me crazy. Especially when some markets don't get a release at all.
Some of that is due to the incompatability between formats though, there are technical limitations preventing a globally supported format. An NTSC player cannot play PAL media, so it isn't region-locked, it's just an incompatible format.
@@elliottsw I can tell you now that region locking DVD/BD media based on NTSC Vs PAL is BS nowadays, especially since even in PAL regions like Australia our modern TV's can handle 60fps playback signals from game consoles even though our TV broadcasts are at 25fps.
It's *extra bullshit* to do region lockouts for DVD/BD drives in PC's (and thus PlayStation/Xbox) as very little software nowadays recognises and respects the region settings that used to lock you out of watching imported and local movies back in the early 2000's.
Programs like WinDVD and PowerDVD (which forced a region switch in the DVD-ROM firmware when playing imported movies) have fallen out of use in favour of region-free software like VideoLAN VLC.
And that's on top of laws that demand DVD/BD players and drives (including game consoles) be set as region-free in countries like Australia in accordance to our laws regarding the fact that grey market imports are legal here (eg: buy a DVD boxset from US (Region 1) or UK (Region 2), no DVD/BD player sold here in Australia can discriminate you from watching said DVD's despite Australia being a Region 4 for DVD's).
@@elliottsw My limited research into this (I wanted to see why some anime that I really enjoyed aren't playable on my ps5) says it's just more like a drm protection than a actual technical reason. Region locking just have to deal with distribution rights and laws around contents as far as I can tell. Ultra hd blu-ray apparently are region free and games have been region free since the ps4/xbox days. So I don't think there is any real technical issue these day with a global standard considering that region free options exist right now. The reason as usual seems to stem from wanting to prevent people from importing content and potentially paying less for it (or in my case paying more and getting a paperweight unless I shell out for a multi-region player).
@@elliottswthat was true in the old days, when TVs ran at different refresh rates due to them refreshing at the power line’s frecuency, but in blu ray? I think the only Blu Ray player with an analog output I’ve seen in my life was a PS3
@DocTime56 TVs can display different formats but you may find that NTSC Bluray players can only use 1080i60 or 1080p60 whereas PAL models use 1080i50 or 1080p50. It's a huge problem in the industry when we broadcast things like the world cup because while monitors can display pretty much anything, the hardware getting the signal to the monitor- either in the house or in the broadcast chain - can't. I don't know for sure but I'd be willing to bet that a PAL PlayStation can only output 50p to a TV and doesn't have the ability to play 60p Blurays, but I could be well off. Definitely true of dvd's though!
"It was paid for, you don't control the product anymore and where it can go"
This needs to be made into Law's in all the places, because this frankly shouldn't be possible for any reason, Region locking of any kind is a disgusting practice.
my question is, how do manufacturers distinguish between grey market and phones used by say tourists or expat workers who may have bought the phone in their home country but working in another?
what % of people do you think that actually impacts?
They can't. Many people use local SIMs when traveling so as to not go broke from all the ridiculous roaming fees. Then there's people such as myself who have citizenship to more than one country and spend time in both. I always use a local SIM as SIM1 and my other SIM as SIM2 to avoid roaming fees as much as possible. Thankfully Vivo don't mind where you use their phones.
@@mcbean1 A heap of people - more than most would like to admit. The sickening part is that the big names don't care, they like the power trip.
@@matthewnirenberg my dude if you can afford the airfare you can afford the sim, don't try and bs me on that. getting a basic phone and data package is easy af these days, if you are flying international that much you should be able to afford it.
@@matthewnirenberg Do these people fly international often, if so they can find a $30 per month sim, it isn't hard
Bricking phones is crazy. Here in Chile, if you buy a phone on another country, you need to issue some bureaucratic process to verify you bought it and its not black/grey market.
And even then, the worst they can do is block the phone signal, you can still use your phone at its fullest but you cant use sim cards for phone calls or mobile data.
What if you bought another cellular radio module that works in the country and then swapped them out? Would cell service be unblocked then? Or maybe swapped the motherboard to one that was registered in the country?
True same here in Indonesia
@@Nexalian_Gamer It's probably IMEI based, so if you spoof it to one that works there (or change the component that has it), it would probably work there.
My favorite is that these businesses will go around and say they “Lost money” because of Grey Market phones, when that is absolutely 100% false.
Grey market is waaaay simpler than that, you can use a VPN to buy something from amazon Japan and save money because of the exchange rate, that is considered grey market.
The ban has to do more with the individual laws on each country and the big techs saying “that phone wasn’t ment to be used in X country because it doesn’t comply with the local laws so we are not going to give warranty on it” which makes a tinny bit of sense, but is no excuse to lock the phones
Regards region locking. For years Valve insisted I was based in Russia and kept selling me things in Roubles. I never set my account to Russia, never been to Russia. I bought so many games until they decided to fix the bug and put me back onto £ Sterling.
The idea of modern region lock scares me especially for those that actually travel as suddenly your phone is bricked just because you dared to step somewhere that don't support it especially if you were on a vacation trip to that place. Like this whole thing hurts tourists more than anything as they have phones not issued from that country
I mean if you still have your SIM from the country that supports the phone, why would it get bricked abroad? You'd just be in roaming right?
@@stefannita3439 Yeah, this would affect the more niche travel users who travel regularly enough to have 2 SIM cards, usually for work. It's also "niche" but not a small amount of people by any means, especially people who live near the USA border here in Mexico. There are so, so many people who live in Mexico but have a job in America or have a job in Mexico that requires them to cross the border and contact American partners and clients regularly. That means there must be a good number of people with both an American and a Mexican SIM in their phone, and at least one of them probably had their Samsung blocked by having the Mexican SIM card in.
@@stefannita3439 Outside the USA, Canada and Australia, dual-SIM phones are the norm. As someone with multiple citizenships who spends time in each country of which I'm a citizen, there's no way in hell I'm paying $5 per day in roaming fees plus 2x the per minute cost. The first thing I do when I get off the plane is swap to the local SIM. If I need to run my other SIM it takes SIM2 slot (secondary SIM) in my dual SIM Vivo phone. Roaming is a great way to go broke. This way SIM 1 is the local SIM and I don't get hit with roaming fees unless the SIM2 SIM gets a call or text.
@@matthewnirenberg wow, didn't know roaming was still that bad in 2023 tbh. I'm from Romania and I've traveled all over the EU and never had any issues. My phone plan includes roaming and is the equivalent of about 8 euros per month
@@stefannita3439 Yeah, that's the nightmare of Australian SIMs and why when I'm not in Australia I use local SIMs. Phone plans, internet and entertainment is hideously expensive in Australia for no real reason other than "they can". My EU SIM is about 14 Euros a month (with a heap of data).
This is very anti consumer to lock phones legally bought. This makes me not wanting to buy phones at all if the governments cant stop it.
Well... technically legal, and part of the reason it's done is because of the government.
@@RippahRooJizah boycott the governments then that allow this.
@@timbo303official9 Well, I'm not exactly a mexican resident so I can't "boycott the government".
thing is, the commerce that will get self-screwed the most is probably gonna be the Telecom companies that now have to replace/refund the massive amount of Phones that no longer work despite them paying for the service
Nothing says eco-friendliness and renewability more than bricking electronic devices just because you don't like them in that part of the world
Another mexican here
There is suspicion that it wasn't the brands themselves, but rather the telecommunications operator 'Telcel' Interestingly, those who announced taking action against the gray market are affiliated with that operator.
In any case, the actions taken are anti-consumer, as the devices sold by the operator end up being more expensive than in the United States
Should point out most cellphones in Mexico are more expensive over here than U.S., plus the taxes and in some cases lower specd, a motorola I was looking at a few years ago was more expensive in Mexico but had half the RAM. Keep in mind salaries in Mexico are way lower than in the U.S.
Note: Don't have a grey phone market btw but I understand how many people need them.
Add to that, Apple marks the iPhone 10-15% in Mexico, but at least you get exactly the same device here and in the US.
The moto edge 30 fusion costs double in Mexico than in the US, it is a midrange device priced between the base iPhone 14 and base iPhone 15.
If the iPhone looks like a reasonable buy against your midrange device, you have to realize that you are doing something wrong
The idea that you pay more for something because the company has deemed you more fuckable is just gross to me.
Fun fact:
In Brazil, the IMEI is in the product recipe - and if you get robbed, with your recipe in hands, the police and carriers are allowed to block that IMEI number country-wide.
In Brasil there was this huge argument about taxes on electronics back when the ps4 launched because it was around 500 dollars in the US i think, but in Brasil it would cost 4000 reais. And the stupid part is that it was cheaper to get a plane ticket, go to Miami, buy a ps4 and come back. So lots of smaller and online stores just bought the ps4s in nearby countries like Paraguai, get someone to ship them to Brasil for cheap and resell for 3500 for example, cheaper than most official big stores but still expensive enough to make a profit and it doesnt raise immediate red flags that it could be a scam
Companies shouldn't be able to change the price of a service or product based on ANY of your data. The predatory practices that have come from this, would make us sick.
And it's clearly legal, or people like Tom Scott wouldn't advertise VPN's as a way to get around this.
I gave my mom in Mexico my US s21 as a gift now I’m worried they might block it. The bad part is she can’t really afford a new phone.
Out of 4 last phones I bought, 3 came from AliExpress(1 with next day shipping from a local warehouse in my region) and the last was still a Chinese phone, but I bought it from a local reseller because I needed it next day for my grandma and wanted local-ish warranty.
About the taxes in Brazil: The importation taxes for personal goods START at 30% of the FULL PRICE (including shipping), and if your product costs more than 50 US$ (again, including shipping) it goes to 90%. Electronics get even more taxes to "support the local (inexistent) market", making it well over 100%.
Because of that, pretty much all higher-end electronics (like iPhones, flagship Galaxies, newer GPUs, etc.) are obtained from the gray market
I’m surprised that Indonesian solution to this grey market problem isn’t explored. So instead to the manufacturers, the government asked local mobile providers to disable cellular signal to unregistered IMEI. So they just make it a “wifi only” phones which isn’t as aggressive as bricking the device. This was considered as a success to block floods of smuggled devices from china or used carrier-locked phone from japan.
However to not sh*tting on existing grey market phone users when the rule implemented back in 2018, every unregistered IMEI that have been connected to local mobile providers have been whitelisted. Nowdays, if you bring phone from outside Indonesia, you have to use tourist SIM card (or roaming with your international providers), or else you have to pay import taxes/duty (around 10%) of the phone price.
Edit: the IMEI registration done by the manufacturer before legally being sold in Indonesia. So as a buyer, you don’t have to do anything after you bought the phone. It’s just works as it should.
In Pakistan here, there is a heavy tax if you want to use an imported phone to use sim card in it, so the shops are spoofing the imei of android phones by rooting them. It is illegal, but due to absurd tax on the phone sim activation, most people prefer to do illegally spoof the imei, instead of paying such heavy taxes just to make calls and messages on the phone.And it is done by copying the imei of a very cheap feature phone on the smartphone.
When I bought my phone in Malaysia they required it to be used for phone calls for 5 minutes minimum on a local sim before it could be used outside of the SEA area. If phones are required to be used in their place of purchase first then they can't be sold 'new' in other countries because they would have to open the box unwrap the phone and turn it on and connect it to a network first. This would prevent mass purchases of phones throwing them in a boat and smuggling them across the border
In the Philippines, I remember that the pricing of the Galaxy Note 1 was wild where you can get sweet discounts from different stores as my sister bought one. When it was my turn and bought the Note 2, everyone was selling it for a fixed price. The store said Samsung mandated everyone not to change the price.
Also, it sucks here in the Philippines, we're slowly getting stripped of our regional pricing. Now, there's no incentive in buying AAA titles.
I used to be able to buy Jedi Fallen Order for just $13.23 USD (around ₱700) back in 2019. Now it's a full priced game with semi-occasional discounts that still is too high for my salary.
the main issue i can see is that an end-user may not necessarily know their phone even IS grey market. it's not like a shop that sells them is going to have any qualms slapping "authorized retailer" on their signs and pretending to be legit.
Even in Canada, it's not that hard to find a smart devices from another country if you buy online. My Galaxy Watch Active was bought on Amazon and it was a German model, it wasn't specified on the page. Doesn't change anything for me, you can choose the language you want and it was cheaper, but just knowing that Samsung could just disable it at any time because it has a German SN in Canada... I don't like it at all. I understand the idea behind it, but that's incredibly anti-consumer, a lot of people probably don't even know that their phone was imported and don't care.
The big companies like to benefit from work all over the world. Then they can as well sell to us at the lowest price all over the world too.
Whether spoofing IMEIs is illegal or not, in México software enforcement is not a thing at all
It very much is. Like most places, individuals and small businesses fly under the radar, but get a little bit big and you'll see enforcement of license models.
@@tachinman yes but not for the reasons you might think, the “enforcement” comes from the private sector, not the government, let’s say you want to sell your products on COSTCO, before they even consider your product you need to meet minimum certification requirements like the safeties of your employees according to the local government (STPS in México) and in some cases meet and surpass OSHA regulations. Another example, you want to sell exclusively for the US Market, you need to meet UL standards for that. And some of those standards include information security and wouldn’t you know it, unlicensed software doesn’t meet security standards. Pirated solid works? Autodesk? Adobe suite? Windows? Doesn’t meet information security standards, you cannot sell in our retail stores.
Amazon bought phones in us, that pay taxes on the border for imports are "grey market"
Stop calling it gray market. It's AFTER market. The REsell market. If someone sells their phone, samsmug has no right to any proceeds or to disable it!
You are so right but this is how companies make anything not from them sound evil
The "aftermarket" refers to goods purchased related to another purchase. One might buy an aftermarket phone case for example.
The grey market refers to sales not directly authorized by the manufacturer. I don't see any way in which this term implies the manufacturer has any right to subvert grey market sales, it's only grey because such sales are less readily visible.
@@VitalVampyr WRONG. Gray market is what mfg. are trying to brand someone who owns something then selling it on. This is why more and more types of DRM are being pushed so you can't resell anything you've bought. It's a form of forced obsolescence.
@@matthewj5333 That's just what I said, the gray market are sales not directly authorized by the manufacturer.
The manufacturers' interest in people buying more directly from them is unrelated to whatever name the market sector comprised of sales by end users is labelled.
@matthewj5333 You clearly don't know the definition of anything you're trying to discuss...grey market is literally explained in the video - a simplified explanation but still.
The other commenter already explained what the aftermarket is, it has nothing to do with the grey market in itself.
And what you're talking about regarding DRMs applies to the second-hand (aka used) market.
You clearly have an internet connection, use it to educate yourself some more.
I bought gray market software from Thomann in Germany. Ableton Live Suite costs $750 but Thomann was having a Black Friday holiday sale and I got it for $422. I've also bought a mechanical watch from the gray market where they can be had at almost half price as well.
There's another side to this story too.
What if you go on vacation to a country where your phone was not meant to be sold and you take a sim there to have a local phone number or data because it's cheaper for you.
Or say you go live abroad for studies with your phone you bought in your home country, then it'll get bricked but you can't just use your subscription from your home country indefinitely because there are laws against that (it's called illegal competition, and maybe it doesn't exist everywhere).
They would block your phone too then?
And I don't think there'd be a way to see the difference between these 2 cases.
Once a product is sold, it no longer belongs to the manufacturer! They no longer have any say in what happens to it. I don't understand how there can be any other logic to this!
South African here. Brother in law in South Korea has brought my mom and dad phones from there because import taxes in SA are so ridiculous that phones can cost double what they cost in Korea. Add to that, the fact that salaries are so much lower here, and I totally understand why people buy Grey market phones. Taxes are much higher in developing countries, exactly because the income is generally lower. Then that tax income is stolen through rampant corruption. It's a horrible cycle and the little guy gets hurt. So Samsung and Motorola can just chill, they still get the same amount of money for each sale. Greedy f-ng corporations.
Why should a company have to take on the problems with your corrupt government, how about you get that sorted first and stop blaming outside entities.
@@mcbean1 that would be racist.
@@ForOne814 nice try buddy
I'm from Chile and i bought a Xiaomi phone through aliexpress because it was a bit cheaper that way. It worked perfectly fine until one day it got a software update and now it doesn't get signal at all. The Xiaomi representatives we have here told me they don't offer tech repair, they only swap the whole phone if it's still under warranty, but since i didn't buy the phone here, i couldn't claim warranty. I'm seriously suspecting Xiaomi has disabled my phone remotely the same way Motorola and Samsung have been found to do in Mexico.
flashing custom firmware along with some special tools can allow you to change the IMEI number it's gonna be annoying, inconvenient, and costly but there are ways to get these working again since these have been around ever since smartphones has been around and is always used by thieves working with shady repair shops that is commonly used to get around device tracking.
The Indonesian government just blocks all phones with unregistered IMEI from connecting to any network in Indonesia, so they can only connect to WiFi. It's to force everyone who comes into the country to pay customs and taxes for the phones they bought abroad. As long as you pay and register the IMEI, you'll be able to use it just fine.
Mexican here. There's even a more awful (but smaller in scale) problem with blocking phones not activated in here, if someone from the country that this phone is cheaper comes to live in here for, lets say a couple years due to work or school, they may not want to buy a phone while doing it so, but being that they may need to communicate with coworkers or schoolmates (or whatever) they could buy a phone line (with a SIM) in here, but getting their phone blocked, that would suck. Just thought of that example, probably more rare that what I'm making it sound.
I got burned on an international phone (LG G4 Bootlooping) not being able to claim under warranty. Never again.
It's 92% tax on items above 50USD in brazil (60% Federal tax + 17% State tax applied after the federal tax, resulting in 92%)
Why changing the IMEI, just use a "Custom ROM", done
If you do this, they can still block the "IMEI" in the mobile network, but at least with a "Custom ROM", no manufacturer can block your smartphone
Phone manufacturers were already region locking phones by disabling radio bands in different countries to make phones not work on other networks. This is especially egregious because they are disabling the features after someone bought it.
Google fixed the regional thing by only using the currency with your registered location, you have to be in the new region for a few months or a year to be able to change your Google account to a new region.
Manufacturers should keep their mitts off goods that they left their possession in a lawful manner.
not if they are being used for business, otherwise what is stopping a competitor to apple buying an iPhone, reverse engineering it and making a 100% replica, and selling it legally? nothing according to you seeing as the initial phone was purchased lawfully....think before you post.
Designs are protected by copyright. If someone besides the owner can brick their phone, that phone is not theirs.
@@andreigrigorev3499 are you a bot?
@@mcbean1, did you run out of arguments already? If the phone was not stolen from the factory/warehouse, it's not their property anymore. And that has absolutely nothing to do with reverse engineering. Being able to disable customer device cannot prevent that.
@@andreigrigorev3499 wow, do you not just see how you contradicted yourself, on one hand you say once you've purchased something you should be allowed to do with it whatever you want. But on the other if you tried to replicate it (ie do something you wanted to do with it), that would be against the law...?
What you don't seem to understand is that is it ok for an individual to do something, but once it becomes a business, different laws apply.
Why is straight up smuggled goods that is sold under conditions forbidden by international trade laws and tarifs a "gray area" and when "adblock is actual piracy"? I mean, one of these is actually illegal
Samsung region locks phones in the Nordic countries. Only sim card from Nordic country can activate it. Region locks has always been a bad idea. That's why companies do this.
Wait, what happened to the term black market?
Both Wisconsin and Michigan are approximately shaped like the back of your left hand, though Michigan also includes the Upper Peninsula above Wisconsin which throws off the shape.
Upper Michigan is vaguely shaped like the front of your left hand, and Lower Michigan the front of your right hand.
Have lived there for more than a decade. Just don’t buy a phone with a carrier plan and even so I haven’t got locked phones since 2013
The problem is the is not possible to sell the prices as same price as USA most of time cuz other countries have different imports cost tax etc
its kinda like buying some game from a digital store cheaper in another country
Speaking from the other side of the side of the table as an engineer, countries like Mexico (and other smaller countries) do often have different requirements as far as approvals go. I don't know the specifics - that's not really my job, but I do recall having to do special versions of PCBs to add u.FL connectors for radio modules to do conducted emissions testing, when the radio module was approved everywhere else in the world with no additional testing (aside from maybe co-located transmitter testing in a product with multiple radios or the like).
Now that doesn't necessarily mean that an out of market device is different hardware, or illegal to use. The situation may just be that Motorola didn't want to raise prices everywhere else worldwide to subsidize the engineering and approvals cost of supporting a certain country, so they probably priced the product in that country accordingly. If they're not buying it through official sources at that price, that may totally screw with their financials that they used to decide whether or not to enter that market.
Brazilian here... it is impossible for the average guy not to recurr to the grey market every now and then... Not only we have 50-100% on taxes, but wage/hour is also much lower, plus, currency is worth less. Out of the top of my head I'd say things end up costing at least 10 to 15 times more work hours here.
My brother recently went to usa for an internship, we r from India and he bought an iphone 14 for himself what could a company do. i mean bringing packed iphones isn’t allowed but u can just remove the phone put it in ur pockets and bring atleast 2-3 for others as well, how would a company stop this coz everything that would have happened in this scenario is legal, there is no smuggling, no grey marketing just family and friends doing it for each other when they travel abroad
Region locks are in Steam too. I tried to gift a game to my bother for his birthday which was on sale in my region. Nope. In fairness I think it was at the publisher's instigation, not Steam's, but Steam still allows that behaviour.
I also seem to think L4d2 has different versions with blood being green in Germany to reduce the gore factor and I seem to think it was banned in Australia at one point, but I could be wrong there.
Well the different versions existing to adjust to each countries law (Germany doesnt allow to show blood or gore in games) to be able to distribute & sell the game there is fine, you know - Germany is a big market 🤷 But locking THE SAME version of the game to specific regions to be able to manipulate the price is just evil.
@@Glethilsteam does have a differential price, but it's objective is to adjust it for lower income countries. The idea is that by allowing a lower price in the local currency, more people have access to the game and consider buy it instead of pirating. You do need to pay using a credit card of that country and it has a limited places where you can activate them if they are gifts. Once activated you can use them anywhere.
I live in Argentina and games are usually way cheaper than in USA or EU. I have games that I probably wouldn't be able to afford if I have to pay the same as USA. But do to people abusing this cheaper games system and our messed up economy, steam is reverting the game prices to usd unfortunately....
@@Glethil I don't get how the german censor boogeyman is still a thing in peoples minds these days lmao. Look something up before making such allegations. There are maybe one or two games a year that are altered in the German market per year. The only recent one I can remember is Dead Island 2 (No dismembering ragdolls, everything else is in). Even Swastikas are OK these days, Wolfenstein 2 is fully uncensored in Germany. Shut up about things you don't know.
@@EstebanGrasso yeah, and there is Poland which has game prices locked on EU level, while polish households earning significantly less than the western european countries. So fair.
I used to work at a samsung approved repair shop, we performed IMEI rewrites multiple times a day. Very doable if you can get your hands on the software
Indonesia does the same. New phones activated since 2019 (I think) need to have the IMEI registered in the government database, otherwise you won't get a cell signal. Basically, you need to buy a phone officially sold in Indonesia (I think the IMEI is registered by the manufacturer). If your IMEI is not registered because you imported the phone from another country or you accidentally bought a illegal phone, you can register the IMEI but you have to pay tax for your phone.
No countries, no borders, no region-locks. Togetherness now!
Linus's chair always reminds me of Cupra, the Spanish car company, ironically part of the Seat group.
(They have a copper-toned, triangular logo)
Depending on the model of device changing the IMEI is really kind of easy and there are even tools that will automate the process. It is illegal but only in some countries.
Its likely warranty coverage or pressure from local distributors: do you want us to keep the brand booths, fix the gray market issue
Jason Snell's Mac Break pick this week was a Eufy camera that cost him $28USD. I bought the same one quite discounted for AU$87. Exchange rate considered, he paid half what I did.
But Australia has lots of poisonous spiders so I guess we're even.
I'm brazilian and I work with a distributor for many international manufacturer (not phones, but the situations we face are similar in the regard of grey markets).
The biggest issue here is that these grey market products hurt the local market A LOT. These products inherently come with some degree of illegality - either tax evasion, fraud, actual trafficking, etc, and in some cases they are just taken directly from the fabs.
When these products enter the market or become a possible avenue, local retailers can't compete, their stock is dead since it can sometimes cost twice the price you get from importing grey market products. Of course, these grey market products don't have any warranty, don't meet all the legal requirements of local authorities, yet people will still seek the local manufacturer, creating additional costs and issues. And that brings another issue:
If Samsung is selling phones in Brazil, it's not Samsung International doing it, but Samsung Brazil, a subsidiary which for 99% of companies is basically independent and has to carry their own weight or get axed. These local subsidiaries depend on the local market to thrive - they get 0 revenue from grey market products, but all the cost. Even if you have a local store importing grey market phones, they likely don't pay taxes and won't ever think about going legal.
To give the other side of the coin, it also doesn't help that these companies also greatly favor large retailers and let them murder the smaller stores giving better prices, conditions and so on. Americanas from the 3G Capital group was a massive national retailer in Brazil, they were bigger than Amazon, and left every major manufacturer with a debt in the hundreds of millions each - yet years before they were widely known to cause problems in every market by dropping prices and undercutting everyone even at their own loss.
As to why they can't sell at the same value, it's complicated and it's really a matter of the costs to operate in each country. For example, in Brazil you have to offer a minimum 3 months warranty + if the customer bought their product online they have a 100% free 7 days trial period and can return the product during this period at no cost. Theoretically you could buy a brand new Ps5 + Gow Ragnarok, play it, and send it all back at no cost as long as you do it within 7 days. It's great for customers and surprisingly there isn't much abuse, but it does increase the cost of operating in Brazil. Taxes and labour laws are another easy example.
So... Yeah the situation sucks, and while companies WILL try to maintain bigger margins when they can, the blame isn't entirely theirs. The reason this happens is that the whole system is broken and there are no easy fixes. That all said, I will always be 100% against any measure that harms the customer, specially when all the person did was trying to buy a good product at a fair price.
The cost of new phones is getting ridiculous, Ive been buying refurbished flagship phones for years now. Hopefully I dont end up with one that gets randomly locked on me..
In Indonesia government is already able to register all phone IMEI, so if the phone is not registered into government databases, the phone wouldn't work.
So if you bring or bought a phone outside from Indonesia region (hand bring, not order from online), you need to pay the tax (27% after the phone cost minus 500 USD, if the phone is under 500USD, its free from the tax), and register it in airport customs so the phone can be used in Indonesia.
It's better compared to Mexico I guess?
IMEI can be easily spoofed via software, sometimes even without root access...
Luke's face when Linus says "wherever-istan" at 10:35 is amazing
very very common in thailand/ malaysia for imei to be changed
If I, as an average person, remotely shut down people’s phones, I would be locked up for felony computer crime. I’m sure this would be the case even if I only did this to phones I sold on eBay (just an example; I’m not a seller). Previous custody does not matter. So why, then, do companies only get fines for breaching the security of so many devices? In my mind, this is unambiguously a criminal issue. Also, current law makes access illegal-not just the harm that may or may not be inflicted through that access-so the revelation of the remote shutdown capability should be followed up with cataclysmic legal action.
what happens if someone with a phone that is grey market in Mexico but purchased outside travels and roams to Mexico and puts a local sim in th phone wouldn't they be affect by this too? do we need to buy phone when travel to Mexico now
As a side note, in India IMEI spoofing is a criminal offense.
I lived in Turkey 🇹🇷 for 6 years, and Turkey has a similar system of IMEI whitelisting. Here's how it works: if you're a Turkish manufacturer, your phone's IMEI is registered (thats why General Mobile, and Venus phones are much cheaper in Turkey), other manufacturers have to register upon import. Civilians who buy phones from abroad have to register the IMEI at the tax office or through e-gov portal, and are allowed to do so once every two years. For registration all you need is your tax ID, the IMEI number, and registration fee. The fee is the biggest elephant in the room, since it is sitting now at 20K Turkish Liras (TL) which is ~700 USD. When I moved to Turkey in 2016 it was 138TL ~ 45 USD which I thought it was ludicrous at the time (yeah, and the TL prices are fucked now, but that is beyound the point). This is a flat fee, so even if you use a Nokia 6300 from 2006 which wasnt registered, you have to pay the full fee. This leads to the stupid situation where an iPhone 15 in Turkey costs 50K TL ~1770 USD, leaps away from the MSRP of 800 USD (VAT is 18%, and add some other taxes and the IMEI fee). Oh and the block from networks starts 2 months after arrival to accomodate for tourists.
Now how the IMEI spoofing is done: on Android phones you can spoof the IMEI with simple CLI tools once the phone is rooted. And usually phone shops buy old phones which are registered, copy their IMEI before disposing of them, and put their IMEI to new phones. Therefore there won't be IMEI clashes, since that results in both phones blocked. iPhones are not spoofed therefore they are considered quite the luxury item.
Changing IMEI is really hard, and impossible for most phones.
Most Xiaomi phones can be easily modded, but some newer ones require hardware modifications.
Only a rare portion of Samsung phones can be modded, and most of them are temporary and will lose the replacement IMEI after a factory reset.
I have no idea about what Moto does. No one imports Moto phones.
On countries like Turkey, they simply have allowlist for IMEIs. Non-local ones start a timer for 3 months after connecting to a mobile network and will be unfunctional after the timer ends.
With the example of Turkey that you mentioned - what happens if a tourist goes to Turkey twice in a year each year? Does their phone get blocked forever or does the timer restart after not seeing the phone for a month?
I'm from South-America, in 2018 I travelled to Spain for tourism and when my phone broke, I bought an "unlocked" Samsung phone on a regular store (Corte Inglés), put my SIM card only to find out that to truly unlock it I had to put a Spanish SIM card, make a 3 minute call to another Spanish cell phone, and then it becomes completely unlocked. Apparently, it was to avoid people from Asia and Africa to purchase Europeans phones, so the idea is not new
Please also consider that bricking a phone is basically locking you out of your data.
that’s global market. you cannot have it both ways, you cannot profit from global infrastructures that made it possible for you to reach billions of customers but lock customers to their own geographical location when there is no technical or actual reason that they shouldn’t be able to buy and use these products. The mobile network is the same, the battery and electricity technology is the same and these manufacturers don’t even bother to include a charger with their product to be able to say that the voltage is different in different regions. these manufacturers should understand that they are “selling” the products not lending them to people.
Gray market is not about stolen phones, that would be Black market. Gray market is more about phones that are legally obtained and sold through non-official means.
If they disable a device that was legally bought, and in most these cases it was, it was just bought somewhere else and resold, they must give the end consumer a refund, FOR FULL PRICE. Also, what makes changing those numbers illegal?
Does the phone become unbricked if the user returns to the original country of sale? That's a really important point.
I can see phones being locked to specific areas, but I'm still against the concept of region locking
My favorite show, the Weekly Analysis and News Show.
If corporations are allowed to take their manufacturing to the lowest cost jurisdiction, I should be allowed to purchase their products from the lowest cost jurisdiction they sell them in.
Why are the corporations allowed to shop globally for materials and labor, but we are only allowed to shop locally for the finished product?
So what if someone was on travel to Mexico and got their phone bricked? I would be super mad if that happened.
why would you buy a phone overseas?
What happens if you are a tourist and using your phone on a local sim? Is there a grace period?
How would Samsung or Motorola even know that these devices are graymarket devices in the first place, and not simply used devices that have been passed on to friends or family, or even just somebody who moved to Mexico?
60% in brazil most of brazil, but 92% in RS or 100%+ in MG states. This something that never changed when the ratio Real Dollar was not 1:1 anymore
I live in the Mexican Border and it's more affordable to buy a phone on Amazon or any other store in the US and then use that phone in Mexico. The customs office in Mexico allows us, that live on the border, to have a bunch of personal stuff that don't require import tariffs
ID numbers on mobile devices are not protected by law like a VIN or a firearm serial. You can legally change it to whatever you want, it doesn't mean the phone network will be happy with it but no cop is going to arrest you for it. VIN and firearm numbers are for law enforcement(stolen cars is a felony while a stolen phone is a misdemeanor and murder being murder is one large reason), with phones they only need the phone number for law enforcement purposes and thus no laws protecting the ID numbers.
Same here in pakistan if you want to use a sim you have to pay a tax . So basically a 1000 dollar phone costs us for like 1500 to 1800 dollars. Also iphones have highter tax even if the msrp is same as other brands.