Author Archives: Amery Ai

My attention was initially caught by this article’s title, which looked like a very innovative business. The mobile network company makes profit from users and donates part of the profit to charities; meanwhile, users also donate 10% of their bill to the charity.

Although now it is quite hard for this company to get numerous users in a short time, mainly because of its not very economical package. But I believe with the improvement of the package, there must be more and more consumers to be attracted by this double-win business, that not only meets consumer themselves’ needs, but also makes a difference to the society. As Keith Dyer said: while there was “nothing remarkable” about the packages on offer, the scheme itself may appeal to users’ philanthropic side, this is such a smart business that provides people both service and the opportunity to donate money during their “day-by-day lives”.

People would like to see more and more this type of business that is being created, and they are willing to spend their money on this business that is repaying back to the society at the same time.

Reference:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20394691

As a British luxury vehicle brand, Jaguar and land rover is quite popular in Chinese high-end market. Chery as the most famous Chinese local brand owns a huge proportion of the local market. The 1 million joint venture between these to company brings them to a milestone.

The establishment of the manufacturing plant indicates that Jaguars and Land Rovers cars will be manufactured in china, in other words fewer cars are being shipped from foreign countries, so the shipping cost could be eliminated and more profit on each car could be made. At the same time, chery is able to benefit from this double-win partnership as well; it could get some technology help from the higher-level foreign company. Jaguar takes a huge step to explore further its Chinese market.

Reference:http://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/358989/Jaguar-building-new-plant-in-China

It’s not surprised to see that eBay has agreed to partner with a Chinese firm to expand its occupation of Chinese Internet market. Because of the large potential of Chinese Internet market, foreign internet-related companies have been trying their best to occupy some part of Chinese markets for years.

China, as the largest developed country, has rapidly increasing number of Internet users nowadays. Internet has already been a necessity for people living in urban areas of China. They use it for not only communication with friends and getting lately updated information but also consuming goods. And with the increasing amount of people living in rural areas starting to explore Internet, more foreign firms begins to target this amazing market for development which have huge potential.

Just few days ago, the biggest online marketplace in China, Taobao, has announced that they have made 19.1 billion Yuan trade in one day on September 11st. That astonishing statistics signals all the firms across the world that Chinese internet market would be the choice to make if they want to make larger profit.

And why does China own such a great potential to grow? That’s large amount of population, greater amount of wealth accumulation, growing sense of happiness of Chinese people, large economic growth, low-cost labour force and the huge amount of people that have not started to use Internet make this happen. And that’s why so many international companies or banks have been making effort to explore their markets in China.

Reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20307571

With the release of the Ipad mini and more portable tablets, this kind of electronic device is becoming increasingly popular among students and it will be found in classroom very common. It is not surprising that the tablet is getting so popular, because it has perfect size to be carried around and users for both entertainment and academic using can easily operate it.

As a matter of fact, students are using tablets to take notes instead of using heavy laptop and traditional paper during class, and they are reading e-book rather than the actual books, which undoubtedly makes students’ study more convenient.

However, from my personal experience, sometimes the tablet becomes a huge distraction for me during class when I am supposed to take notes by this while I use this for social networking or play with some apps. This does not only happen to me, I have also seen many classmates are distracted by this as well.Moreover, as Sidneyeve Mrtrix said: some engineers still use pen and paper to take notes, since it is difficult to write equations on a computer, which is absolutely true.

Thus I would say the tablet is better for students to use as a tool for entertainment. Taking notes by pen and paper still works well all the time, it is not necessary to use the tablet in class, which might exert negative effects on students.

Reference Blog:

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blog/tech/105414–tablets-in-the-classroom-will-soon-be-the-norm

This post is a comment to Tsoi luna’s blog Casino in Downtown Toronto.

After reading through this article, the first thing came to my mind was: this project would bring many benefits to this city.

The first benefit is that the casino and the gambling industry will significantly stimulate local economy. More exactly, there will be much more cash flowing in this city by the gambling and a huge number of gamblers or tourists will be attracted, which could increase the demand for accommodation and positively affect local tourism.

As Luna concerned, the new casino may attract too many people that leads to destroy the peacefulness in that area, but I think this should not be a issue to be worried for local community. As can be seen from the picture in the article, the new casino is located in Downtown Toronto and next to the CN tower, which shows its location is already a busy place instead of a residential area. The casino building will be a conspicuous landmark that could make a better image for this city. Moreover, gambling should not be always seen as a potential threat for the security, for most legally operating casinos, they do not pose any security threats to the local community.

So people do not need to worry about the peacefulness will be destroyed and the security will be under threaten. The establishment of this casino will bring more benefits than drawbacks to both local communities and the city.

This post is a comment to Ruru Lee‘s blog HTC in the competition

I used to be a HTC cellphone user, so I was interested in Ruru’s article about HTC.

It says HTC’s net profit has fallen 79% and the competition in smartphone market is getting fiercer, HTC is rivaling against a few experienced and powerful competitors like Samsung, Apple and Nokia. In terms of technology, it is quite difficult for HTC to improve a lot to beat its competitors up in such a open market where the competitors have equal level of innovation. So I agree what Ruru stated in the article that HTC’s national marketing campaign with tailored phones to the Chinese, would twist the situation, which means HTC needs to explore a new market that more fits itself. Furthermore, personally I find HTC releases its new products frequently and every release does not have too much change compared to the last generation, so I would recommend them to focus more on their products’ quality rather than quantity, which will bring more surprises to consumers.

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-‘Shanzhai’ refers to Chinese imitation and pirated brands and goods, particularly electronics.(Wilkipedia)

With the increasing popularity of Apple product，there are many Chinese manufacturers begin to produce unofficial Apple product with a very low price, which is also known as Shanzhai Apple product. As can be seen from the pictures, obviously, the Shanzhai product has much worse quality, accordingly, they always have extremely low price. As I searched on ‘Taobao’, the Shanzhai ipod 3^rd is around 13$.

In my point of view, the existence of Shanzhai product can be seen as a sign of Apple’s success, only if the company is successful and the product is popular, those manufacturers will follow and try to imitate it to make a profit, but imitation cannot exist for a long time. Innovation and creativity of the technology are the key factors to make a difference on people’s life.

Taobao Marketplace is a Chinese language website for online shopping, similar to eBay and Amazon. It facilitates consumer-to-consumer retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores. Basically, consumer can get every single daily article from there, such as clothes, electronic devices, cosmetics, food, jewelry, books, etc.

The most attractive part of Taobao is its reasonable price of goods, online retail stores substitute virtual retail stores, which lowers the cost from renting a place and hiring numerous sellers.  Moreover, it has established an efficient logistic s system that is able to deliver all the goods to costumers in a short time. And its identifying secure trading platform enables consumers to finish the trade by easily clicking the ‘OK’ button.

Generally speaking, the reason why Taobao succeeds is that it can be well catering modern people’s needs, specifically; it saves both time and money for consumers and brings too much convenience. Its success is a result of good use  of E-Commerce.

Best Buy first stepped into Chinese market in 2006, after five years ‘survive’, it exited Chinese market without any provocation.

Back to 2010, I went to Shanghai and was actually shopping in one of Best Buy retail stores. And there were two the most famous retail outlets called Gome and Suning right close to it.  Compared to those two local companies, Best Buy’s retail stores have better shopping environment where costumers are able to sit in the couch to play new released PlayStation or watch TV; meanwhile, it definitely has better service for customers, many professional technique assistants are available to customers. However, Best Buy focused on its high quality service instead of price of product, which is the most significant factor for most Chinese consumers.  Three electronic retail stores offer pretty much the same product; there is no doubt that consumers would prefer to buy the cheaper one.  Thus Best Buy loses its price advantage and leads itself to a relatively high-end market that gets less attention.

All in all, Best Buy didn’t get Chinese consumers preference very well, which is their extreme price conscious nature. And it had two too strong local competitors that posed a big threat to it.

Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Buy