Shenzhen Electronics Retail Market SEG

Shenzhen is a vibrant, bustling, young, and modern city of 8 million people in southern China. Just across the border from Hong Kong, Shenzhen and the region around it comprise one of the most active and important electronic manufacturing centers in the world today.

The answer to where to buy electronics in Shenzhen is simple, the SEG Electronics Market, reckoned by some to be the biggest market of its kind on the globe. The market is largely centered on two multi storey buildings, including the SEG Electronics Market building, and inside you’ll find each level stuffed with individual sellers. It’s impossible to estimate the amount of sellers but it is in the thousands rather than the hundreds.

Shenzhen is generally regarded as the epicenter of the world’s electronics industry with most of the worlds major brands manufacturing their products here. You can find virtually anything you want in the many electronic markets which can be found around the city, most of which are clustered around Hua Cheng Bei (Hua Qiang Lu Metro Station, exit A)

Hua Qiang Bei is the Electronic Market District of Shenzhen. It is the largest Electronic Marketplace in Asia and most electronic devices in the world originate nearby. The markets themselves house thousands of small individual shops representing manufacturers and factories in Shenzhen and surrounding areas. Navigating through the markets can be tricky and locating specific products can be very difficult without assistance.

On sale you’ll find everything from knock off microchips to Apple products Steve Jobs hasn’t seen yet. If it has electricity, you’ll find it here --- I pods and headphones, to flatscreen TVs and Blu-Ray players and Playstations and Wiis

Each floor of these buildings is packed with hundreds of independent retailers operating out of small stalls, and they’re all competing against each other!

You can find everything in this area of Shenzhen including mobile phones, cameras, gadgets, laptops, pc’s, lcd’s, cables, accessories, batteries from brand names like Canon, Sony, Dell, Apple, Asus etc. You can also find OEM goods and there’s also plenty of brand name copies if you want to take a punt on quality.

Interestingly one multilevel building is dedicated to small components like resistors, leds, plugs and all sorts of electrical and electronic fittings. There’s also whole floors of people selling second hand and recycled goods. If you need your mobile phone, camera or any electronics fixed, it looks like a great place for that too

First-time visitors may be disappointed at the modest façade of the structure. But one only has to step inside to be proven wrong. The deceptively simple exteriors needlessly give way to an area so huge it is relatively easy to get lost. There are mountain full of tapes, IC’s, mobile phones, laptops, processors, memory cards, USBs – just about any modern gadget and accessory, actually. Apart from the abundant supply, what makes the place very popular is the affordable prices. Tourists can gamely haggle for discounts, especially if there are no specific or known brands in the equipment.

Each of these small retailers has a different speciality, be it digital cameras, phones, laptops, memory, or any conceivable component you can think of. You can buy complete systems down to individual resistors and integrated circuits. The diversity is staggering but if you’re looking for something unusual be prepared for a long hunt.