It does say B&O now. 

Totally agree with you Michael. It's B&O which means attention to detail to the finest detail! I was horrified when I saw the charger to the A3 a few year back. A big generic cheap after market thing. I really expect B&O to be on par with Apple on that count. Certainly here in the UK, the iPhone charger is a lovely discreet piece of nice design!

But that's a sticker, a generic charger it is, on the other hand why wouldn't it be. 

Who'll be the first to buy one - and test it against 'the real thing'?

MM

Paul W wrote:

Totally agree with you Michael. It's B&O which means attention to detail to the finest detail! I was horrified when I saw the charger to the A3 a few year back. A big generic cheap after market thing. I really expect B&O to be on par with Apple on that count. Certainly here in the UK, the iPhone charger is a lovely discreet piece of nice design!

The A3 charger is an all-in-one plug with a swivel so that it can turn at any angle to the socket. 100x40x36mm. Made by Qiw. Quite a clever design.

It can't really be compared with the tiny output iPhone charging plug.

Graham

I have always wondered what the "real" cost difference is taking in to account the "long term" effect having items manufactured in China. Apart from the normal focus on quality and having your intellectual property stolen there must become a tipping point where shipping + materials + overheads(wages etc) climb as their economy and society grows.

Can manufacturing in China now be good for manufacturing in the future ?

vikinger wrote:

The A3 charger is an all-in-one plug with a swivel so that it can turn at any angle to the socket. 100x40x36mm. Made by Qiw. Quite a clever design.

It can't really be compared with the tiny output iPhone charging plug.

Graham

Mark wrote:

I have always wondered what the "real" cost difference is taking in to account the "long term" effect having items manufactured in China. Apart from the normal focus on quality and having your intellectual property stolen there must become a tipping point where shipping + materials + overheads(wages etc) climb as their economy and society grows.

Can manufacturing in China now be good for manufacturing in the future ?

we tend to forget there is more to design than designing.

Either these are packaged at a different place, or the guy running the night shift had no access to the packagings. 

On the other hand, if someone bothered to copy it, making all the moulds and stuff, they'd be more likely to fake the packaging as well. 

We are most likely not looking at counterfeits, but rather unauthorised production. Yes everything can be counterfeited, but it doesn't mean there is always an economic incentive to do so. Most of the tech products are in fact NOT counterfeited because the cost of counterfeiting is too high for a low volume production. Moulding is prohibitively expensive, so is making the necessary customised circuit board and getting a contract for the necessary chips. Some of the tech products, such as DSLRs and quality lenses are almost NEVER counterfeited due to forbiddingly high cost of developing the parts and optics. 

So it comes back to the question - should B&O make products in China? I think they shouldn't given that they are not a super popular mainstream consumer brand like Apple or Beats. They simply don't have the resource to be in total control of the factory, therefore unauthorised production is inevitable.