In countries with loose or non enforcement, Philips national divisions, are finding creative ways to increase revenue. This has mostly been done by Philips Hong Kong, for the China/ Asian market, with lax regulation. i have no idea about Australia.
Clearly so. At the end of the day these businesses exist to make money for the shareholders and they would be failing in their task if there was a market segment that they ignored. Particularly a market which is as big, and as lucrative, as that for aftermarket HIDs.
In Australia it is legal to import, distribute and sell these kits. It is not legal to have them in a vehicle that is used on public roads. The police do check and issue infringements where they find them.
These kit ballasts are only slightly better than the ebay specials. These products do not come close to the quality for the OEM markets. Looks like they are re-basing Philips burners with Halogen type bases. All of this may have no blessings from Europe, they may be just turning a "blind eye".
I can't comment on whether Philips Europe are "turning a blind eye" or not, but I'd suggest that they don't have a problem as long as these things are selling and revenue is being generated.
If, as you suggest, they are rebasing Philips burners then that comes back to my earlier question. A Philips burner is a Philips burner regardless of the base which might be fitted. The ones being sold by Philips are, therefore, not fakes. Now, if the factory was to produce more of these in order to get greater economies of scale and then sell them via Ebay, Amazon and the like then those bulbs, too, are not fakes.
There is evidence that Philips have had arrangements to do just this with some of the major bulb manufacturers in China. Certainly TaiChang and, I believe, maybe 3 others. It is my understanding that Philips did licence those manufacturers to sell the bulbs and use the Philips name on the bulbs.
I bought, just for the sake of research, a pair of what were stated to be Philips burners on a D2S base. At around $40 I had my doubts about whether they were genuine or not but my supplier assured me they were genuine Philips burners set in to the base by a factory in Taiwan. Visual inspection showed absolutely nothing that I could identify as varying from genuine on the burners themselves. Obviously there were differences in the base. I then installed them, one side at a time and compared to the genuine originals. Again, nothing that I can see in terms of beam pattern, colour or brightness that varies from the originals.
I then bought a pair of what were claimed to be genuine Philips 85122 bulbs. Same thing except that this time I could see no differences in the base, printing etc. that are the usual giveaways. These ones were $80 for the pair. From the limited resources available to me there is every reason to believe that both these pairs of bulbs are exactly what they claim to be, rather than the real fakes, which I have seen and are usually fairly easy to identify as such.
I'm fortunate that I've been to China a number of times, know my supplier (a wholesaler) and have never had any reason to suspect that they are not supplying what they say they are. However, they have said to me on more than a few occasions, that there are many fakes out there and that their advantage is that they only buy direct ex factory. Not every wholesaler, or retailer, is as ethical so, for the general public, whether they get genuine or a fake is something of a lottery.