Motorola announced plans to spin-off its mobile phone business last week, which reminded me of a funny site about China's domestic cell phones: Shanzhaiji.cn ("shanzhaiji" refers to handsets produced by some illegal or small domestic enterprise).This article on the site illustrates the current state of the low-end handset market and why "Moto's" offerings, as well as other foreign brands, aren't meeting demand. Some of the highlights from the article, which provides insight into some of the things Chinese people are looking for in a handset:

1. Time to market: a lot of "shanzhaiji" are copies of the newest, most popular cell phones, such as the iPhone (see the Hiphone here). A few months after new phones are released overseas, near-identical copies are for sale in China.
2. Low-end handsets are "strong" on multi-functionality: bigger touch screens, longer standby times, support for two SIM cards, support for all types of media files, even four speakers or four cameras on one phone. You can buy a handsets with this "advanced" functionality for about RMB2,000 RMB (how are they able to do this for so cheap? I well tell you next time).
3. Special designs meet special demands: a cell phone with a taser, a cell phone that looks like a box of cigarettes, a cell phone blessed by a monk, even some cell phone batteries with ultraviolet scanners for checking for forged currency.

If Motorola wants to win back the local market, I suggest the company takes a tour of China's low-end handset market first.