The Bamuda phones that even "junk collectors" don't want are being snapped up by "junk girls" like crazy.

A Failed Phone

A Successful Piece of Junk

Balmuda, a Japanese home appliance brand, mainly focuses on traditional home appliances such as bread makers and electric grills.

However, this was the situation before this year.

Now, if you search for "Balmuda" on Xiaohongshu, you'll find the brand's official account, and the featured products are still various home appliances. Surprisingly, when you scroll down, there are numerous posts about the Balmuda Phone, and it's almost impossible to see any discussions about home appliances.

On Chinese social networks, Balmuda has become a completely different company.

The BALMUDA Phone was launched four years ago. It has a curved back like a "pebble" and focuses on providing a comfortable grip with its small screen. However, just like the "digital detox" movement it once represented, although it can't be called a complete failure, it has never entered the mainstream.

Nowadays, this phone has become the hottest "e-junk" on Xiaohongshu and Xianyu. Its price has skyrocketed from being easily available for just over 200 yuan at the beginning to 800 yuan, and there are still people willing to pay for it.

The Popular "Failed" Phone

With its round appearance, slightly curved body, a size that can be easily held in one hand, a wider screen ratio, and a non-protruding rear camera - almost all the design elements of the Balmuda Phone go against the current smartphone template of straight, narrow-bezel, and large screens.

This is actually the original intention of Balmuda to make a phone - to create an "outlier" among smartphones.

Established in 2003, Balmuda has always been well-known for its unique product design style. Making smartphones was originally a completely unfamiliar field for them. However, with the mindset of "trying new things" and being quite dissatisfied with the current similar "brick design," they simply decided to make "the phone they truly wanted" - a small, convenient phone with a cuter and more personalized appearance.

Interestingly, Gen Terao, the president of Balmuda, has the nickname "the Steve Jobs of Japan." Like Jobs, he has the ambition - not to follow the current trends but to redefine the market for Balmuda's main product categories (and phones) with his own understanding of products.

Maybe you're not familiar with this company, but you should have heard of its competitors: Muji, Dyson, Braun, etc.

▲ Gen Terao launches the Balmuda Phone

The distinctive BALMUDA Phone came out at the end of 2021: a 4.9 - inch 60Hz screen, a Snapdragon 765G processor, basically the configuration of 2019, and it was priced at 104,800 yen, which was about 5,000 yuan at that time.

For comparison, the channel price of the iPhone 13 mini in Japan at that time was just over 4,000 yuan.

With such a price, configuration, and a design that goes against the mainstream, the fate of the Balmuda Phone was predictable. It stopped production a few months later, and Balmuda terminated the related business two years later. The Balmuda Phone only had one generation.

As a result, this "think different" product has resonated strangely with users on domestic social media platforms like Xiaohongshu across time and space.

Most people won't be willing to pay 5,000 yuan for a barely usable new phone. However, spending 200 yuan to get a second - hand cute but somewhat useless phone that can be used to watch short videos and send WeChat messages is a completely different story.

Soon, the Balmuda Phone became the new favorite of many digital collection bloggers on Xiaohongshu. Driven by them, it had a boom, and the price in the second - hand market soared. Many netizens who had never heard of Balmuda first learned about this brand through this "failed" phone.

Interestingly, the bloggers who create content about the Balmuda Phone are not the traditional digital KOLs who sit in front of a delicate set and seriously introduce digital products but a group that is similar yet different

- the "e - junk girls."

Who are the "e - junk girls"?

Some digital enthusiasts who have been scouring the second - hand old phones on Xianyu all year round and mainly communicate and discuss on Coolapk, mostly men, are generally called "junk collectors" online. "Junk collecting" has become a unique digital collection culture.

In contrast, there is a group of people who also like to buy various second - hand phones/cameras and other digital products for daily use. However, their preferences are completely different. They are mainly female users on Xiaohongshu and call themselves "e - junk girls" or "digital otaku girls."

▲ Image source: Xiaohongshu@Welcome Puppy

If "junk collectors" prefer to pick up phones with more unique meanings and functions, such as Palm, Lumia, and BlackBerry products, the preferences of "junk girls" are a bit more diverse: there are once - popular flagship phones like the iPhone 6s Plus and Huawei Mate 10, as well as niche and somewhat strange models like the Balmuda Phone and LG F200.

It can be said that the "junk girls" have developed a sub - culture in the "digital junk collecting" activity.

▲ Image source: Xiaohongshu@xxxl

Coincidentally, many "junk girls" are also fans of Japanese and Korean cultures. Since Japanese and Korean phones tend to have non - conventional product concepts, the proportion of Japanese and Korean phones in the collections of junk girls is relatively higher.

Generally speaking, "junk girls" have several preferences: good - looking appearance, special shape, white panel, and practicality.

In addition to small phones like the Balmuda and iPhone SE, "junk girls" also prefer large - screen phones, especially the 8 - inch phones that Huawei and Samsung made a decade ago. Even though these phones are not very usable due to their old systems, the large - sized bodies provide enough space for them to stick stickers all over, just like in "card - decorating" (a sub - cultural term) and making hand - written journals, and they can also set a beautiful wallpaper.

▲ The Huawei M3 is also very popular on Xiaohongshu. Image source: Xiaohongshu@Xiaogan is daydreaming every day, @Qiqiqixingxingxing, @Chocolate Mochi

Many "junk girls" always mention the "white panel" (frame) attribute in their sharing, which refers to the white frame design on the front of the phone.

As we all know, smartphones have basically stopped using white frames to enhance the narrow - bezel appearance. As a result, the white Balmuda Phone on Xianyu is 150 - 200 yuan more expensive than the black version.

Interestingly, you'll notice that Meizu, which still insists on making phones with white panels, is also selecting "junk girl" KOLs for promotion.

Unlike many "junk collectors" who just take a look at the phones they've bought, take a photo, and then let them gather dust, "junk girls" relatively consider the practical value of the products: they buy phones with LCD screens to read novels, large - screen phones to watch dramas, the iPhone Xs to take photos, and they also require the Android version not to be too outdated so that they can install current popular apps.

Based on these preference considerations, we can also see what kind of phone "junk girls" want - a device that looks different from our current phones, can be basically used normally, and is also "e - junk" with a low price.

The Balmuda Phone almost perfectly meets these conditions, and its gentle and soft appearance is more appealing to women than to men.

Although most "junk collectors" have little interest in the Balmuda Phone, a small number of them are also attracted by its special appearance and are more in love with the product concept and brand behind it. These two parallel "junk - collecting" schools have found an intersection in the Balmuda Phone.

▲ The discussion atmosphere about the Balmuda Phone on Coolapk is quite different

If the "junk - collecting" culture has been popular since the Tieba era more than a decade ago, the "junk girl" culture is a newer trend that emerged after the rise of Xiaohongshu.

Compared with the traditional digital product culture, the "junk girl" group is more niche. However, with 200 million users on Xiaohongshu, it can gather these scattered hobbies. Even if they only account for 1% of the user population, that's still 2 million people.

The voice of this "sub - cultural" group of electronics enthusiasts is rising. To some extent, they have changed the mainstream interpretation of digital culture that was completely monopolized by parameters, functions, and performance in the past, making aesthetics and emotional value a new way to understand technological products.

Compared with the troublesome methods like overseas shopping needed to get some strange phones more than a decade ago, the gradual improvement of Xianyu and its second - hand dealer ecosystem has greatly lowered the threshold for phone hunting. As Japanese and Korean culture fans, "junk girls" often buy and sell related peripherals on Xianyu, so it's not too difficult for them to hunt for second - hand phones.

The continuous rise in the price of the Balmuda Phone is very likely because a large number of "foreign junk" phones have arrived recently, and second - hand dealers on Xianyu are promoting and hyping it up behind the scenes.

However, what ultimately makes people willing to pay for these cute but somewhat useless phones is the need for emotional value to please themselves.