>quality and low prices are mutually exclusive. They are not
I disagree. I have the feeling that there is no room left in some products for further price reductions by simply shifting production to China. Now costs are being cut in materials and there comes a point where it all goes too far. During 2005 we had several products from respected manufacturers which failed soon after purchase for what I consider no better reason than cutting corners on components. Here's two examples
The power supply on a slimline Sony playstation 2 died of heat exhaustion after just 8 weeks - most of which was spent in standby mode. Sure, the unit was replaced by Sony, but it's not the quality you expect from them. Sony finally issued a general recall for that batch of power supplies in August.
We have several contract mobile phones where "free" upgrades are taken every 12 months. Two of the replacements were clam shell Motorolas. On day six months + 1, the first one appeared to fail with a blank display, then it would mysteriously start up again. After a while we learned that it was just the display that was not working and if you could remember the menus, you could make and receive calls - not much use for texts though. The high street "face" of the phone operator were clueless. We soldiered on; then the second phone started to do the same thing. Whilst having another fruitless visit to the phone shop we overheard another customer come in and start to explain exactly the same problem. Our son who was studying arts subjects for A level at the time worked out that it was a teeny weeny switch which is supposed to detect when the clam shell was opened but wasn't.
A few years ago these failures would either not have happened because better quality components would have been used or could have been caught with a proper QA process. The cost pressures in todays market are preventing this from happening.
The economy in China is growing at such an incredible rate that something has got to give. At present I think it is quality.
David
