No, but suppose this was another scenario, such as automatic product bagger/sealers and some counterfeit part was being bricked by the original manufacturer. I doubt anyone outside of the warehouse/manufacturing industry would care, nor would anyone outside that industry have any real right to care.
In the FTI situation, I'm indifferent, but I just don't like the "crowd mentality" thing where people get stirred up about things that only a few hours ago, they had no idea even existed.
The company I work for uses (genuine) FTDI USB-Serial converters in our $500,000 medical instruments. I have full confidence in our Supply Chain Management people, but mistakes happen. If we were to send out a field upgrade to the instruments, as happens periodically, and some of them had the counterfeit chips, then suddenly there are patients all over the world, many in Emergency Rooms or Intensive Care, that can't get their test results because instruments are down.
This can affect many, many people not in a particular industry, depending on where the device is embedded.
As soon as I heard about this, I notified our senior design EE so he could pass the information on if necessary. This is not to be taken lightly.
The scenario you present is a little "doomsday". You'd have to replace all of your deployed product's chips with cheap counterfeit ones for this to happen -- and you say you have complete confidence in your supply chain.
My warehouse has a couple Sharp Max baggers w/ counter and sorter, which are just as expensive as your medical instruments. The electronics check to ensure you are using only the Sharp brand parts, otherwise the machine refuses to work.
Most printer cartridges won't work in printers unless they are the name-brand cartridge (printers read the chip on the cartridge).
Neither permanently damage the counterfeit parts, but it doesn't matter much if you can't use the counterfeit part you just bought (thinking you were going to save a buck or two).
Frankly, I don't buy the argument that a lot of users didn't know they had bought counterfeit. For a device that retails for $15 and you got it new for $1.50, well, something is up.
Perhaps a better way for FTI to go would be to detect the counterfeit when it's plugged in, then just refuse to do anything with it. (although this would allow someone to get a non-FTI driver to work)
All it takes is one bad chip in a critical location in one instrument and that instrument is down, or at least rolled back to "limp mode" depending on which feature the chip supports. That instrument may be processing hundreds or thousands of patients a day if it is installed in a large medical lab. Do you see the problem here?
Sure, an Emergency Service Call will take care of the problem, but that can take hours (over a day in some locations).
Steep discounts for volume are the norm. Its arguable that the consumer doesn't know nor care why the discount; as long as the vendor/product passes a qualification test.
Not to mention that he's assuming the cost was different. Many companies have to deal with counterfeit parts (we have) and often the only difference is that they either outright refuse to work (good!!) or fail early (very bad).
