1. They will continue to make life miserable for firmware upgrades making it virtually impossible to go from one ("Non Chinese") firmware upgrade to another using Hikvision cameras intended to be sold in China elsewhere. Meaning, they will continue to use new techniques making it impossible to use one ("Hacking") method that may work on a series of firmware releases, with all future firmware releases.
In reality they have only made modest changes, and only put small obstacles in the way of the on-line sellers, the clever Russian hackers who provide their workarounds and the enthusiast community. It would be so easy to add a full lockdown that even NSA would struggle with. But they have not done that.
What they must do, and are doing, is to show their value-added authorised distributors that they are at least taking some steps to protect the distributors margins by squeezing grey imports.
2. They will start to make major hardware changes to those camera models intended to be sold only in the Chinese domestic market using lower quality components and potentially less onboard memory and/or cheaper/slower CPU's to help stop the bleeding while also allowing the cameras to remain cheaper domestically ("In China") than they are internationally.
"
using lower quality components" What nonsense, in my opinion. What professional engineering organisation is going to deliberately break their products in this way and risk their reputation for excellence? Slowly gained, easily lost. They will continue to develop new models with features and pricing based on their market analysis of what they can sell and where. That's the normal product development cycle.
Hikvision has no choice but to be creative to fight this issue of their IP cameras intended to be sold in their domestic Chinese market being sold in the international market instead.
They could easily "
fight this issue" and win it - and by doing so cut off a big chunk of their sales. The Chinese on-line sellers don't magic their stock up from nowhere.
Hikvision benefit from the ability to sell their very good products across multiple markets and outlets at prices specific to each region, whilst keeping their authorised distributors sweet by maintaining their margins in return for the brand recognition and penetration this provides.