I wandered along to 7-11 at lunchtime today to get a carton or two of tea, and I noticed some digest-sized magazines sitting in a little rack by the cash register. There were two magazines about Windows Mobile version 6, and three about the Apple iPhone. I did a little shopping yesterday, including some video game-related stuff, and while I was waiting for something, I had a bit of a chat with the guy running the booth/stall/shop about the current prices of Nintendo Wiis in Hong Kong. Both unremarkable things, except for the fact that 'officially' there are no iPhones or Wiis in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has one of the busiest ports in the world - and there's no doubt that the if you combine the tonnage shipped through Hong Kong with Shenzhen, you will find the heaviest traffic in the world, by a long way. A very large proportion of manufactured goods from China ship through Hong Kong or Shenzhen, and a large proportion of all the manufactured goods in the world come from China - including the Wii and iPhone. The iPhone, in fact, is only available in a rather limited number of markets - approximately 6 at that point - due to Apple's policy of close and exclusive partnering with a single phone network in each country. The Wii is generally available globally, but there is neither an official Hong Kong model nor a price. The Wii and the iPhone are, of course, both widely and easily available in Hong Kong, but due to a lack of official release, support and pricing from the manufacturer, the market is free to act as it will.

Hong Kong regularly ranks as 'the free-est economy in the world', but even leaving aside the interesting point of Hong Kong now being a semi-autonomous part of a communist country, that's not really true. While the government doesn't generally interfere in the economy too much directly, there are some strong distortions of certain markets which have a measurable effect on things at a macro level - but at a micro level, things are very free. That is, of course, a good thing and a bad one - Europeans tend to get upset at the lack of consumer, tenant and employee protection in Hong Kong, but it also means that really, nobody official is interested in the vast grey market. As an example, Apple doesn't have official resellers in Hong Kong, but there really isn't much they can do to stop unofficial ones springing up, selling products Apple does not wish to have available, or in ways they disagree with. Due to the lack of an official Apple-supported route to get an iPhone in Hong Kong, every single iPhone in Hong Kong is unlocked - and I would assume that a large majority are also 'jailbroken', modified to run non-Apple-blessed software. Once you are operating outside the official limits of the device, breaking the warranty for sure, and probably the software license as well, just to get the device to work, why not open it up as far as you are able - rather than as far as the manufacturer wants?

The Wii, of course, is differently interesting. There has been no release of the Wii in Hong Kong, and while there are mod-chips and other methods available to play games from foreign regions, nobody has managed to hack it enough to change the language. While there is only a single model of Wii, unlike the Xbox360 and PS3, there are effectively 2 models available in HK, the Japanese one and the US one. They are identical hardware, but the US one has menus in English and allows access to the US Wii shop, and comes with a copy of Wii sports. The prices are purely set by the market, there is a certain demand for each 'model', there is a certain supply - more of the Japanese machines are available than US ones - and prices change, both up and down, over time.

The really interesting thing is that while neither of these pieces of in-demand consumer electronics hardware are officially available in Hong Kong, both are in fact easily and widely available. In fact, there are enough of them in Hong Kong that there is a flourishing support market - Wii games and both Wii and iPhone accessories are very openly sold by major retailers, even if the actual device is still sold slightly underground. That is what makes Hong Kong an open, free market, where what might be considered at least grey market, if not black, elsewhere, is just considered 'doing business' here. And one final point: while in many ways Hong Kong is a small town, with small town mentality, this is one way in which locals are very open and progressive - it seems unnatural to them that a manufacturer would - or would be allowed to - limit their markets or the uses of their devices, and it is second nature for Hong Kong to just route around these limitations.