A major risk in dealing with unofficial brokers instead of going through distributors is a good chance of getting devices that were scrapped in production test due to malfunction or failing on performance parameters.
We have had several customers with issues sourcing this way and not realizing their devices are malfunctioning.
Re:Securing a SoC is Not Easy
by userbinator on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @06:31AM
(#7183153)
The idea is to "feed off the leftovers" until you grow to the point where you can order above the MOQ directly. It's a very different growth model.
Brokers are very common in electronic production.
You need to be careful when asking for quotes. If Bob has stock of product, and you ask 3 different brokers for quotes, you've just driven cost of that product up.
That's especially frustrating when three or four sub contractors are requesting quotes for the same part to be used for the same potential job being inquired about by the end customer.
Bunnie also suggests learning enough Chinese to participate in what he terms the "gongkai" (公开), the quasi-open but legally murky design and production ecosystem producing much of our electronics, where documentation and specs are apparently available about as freely as torrented episodes of Game of Thrones.