comm 101

Today, the new Apple products of new iPads, MacBooks, and Mac Pros were introduced  in San Francisco.However, what makes Apple decide to sacrifice its profits to free its major software? This is including Mac OS X, code-named Mavericks. Mavericks and two other software suites, iWork and iLife. Also, Apple kept the trend to lower its price for the previous version of Mac OS X,Mountain Lion ($19). On the contrary, MSFT charges a much more expensive price to update its new version system($120). To answer this question, this is actually a marketing strategy for Apple to make more profits. More specifically, software is a means to sell hardware. There are still some professional apps to make a powerful profit margin, but it can not be regarded as the major products in markets. Its marketing strategy is to let your Apple products update the latest version of the software as soon as possible, so it can achieve the perfect integration of its hardware and software in a more efficient way. Thus, they can sell more Apple products due to the integration of its hardware and software.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-22/why-apple-wants-its-software-to-be-free

When thinking of Samsung Gear, the very first smart watch in the market, I consider it as a redundant product. Just simply imagine what one can do on that tiny screen. Texting and input anything will take a lot unnecessary efforts. So it should not be considered as a traditional input tool which accept complicated touching commends, rather it should only accept simple touching command. It’s possible that voice command becomes the dominant means of input. The complicated output is not desired as well. The ideal apps running on it would be like heart beat display and music apps. Too much lines is a disaster to a product in such society that people desire efficiency. Moreover, this gadget should be considered a compliment to the cell phone itself instead of standing alone. Without the phone, Samsung Gear will mostly resemble an iPod Shuffle with a touch screen on it. This is meaningless to most users who has various needs. The futures of Samsung Gear or same kind of device are still unknown. Market will judge.

Andrew , Hoyle. “Samsung’s smartwatch is style over substance.” CNET. (2013): n. page. Web. 8 Oct. 2013. <http://reviews.cnet.com/samsung-galaxy-gear/>.

On Monday, it was the first time that NLSN published a new TV metric for social TV: Twitter TV Rating. This TV program was generated to measure not only the “authors”- the about of people who were tweeting, but also a greater scale of “audience” – the people who actually view these tweets. The analysis of Nielsen TV Rating demonstrated the number of Twitter TV audience is approximate 50 times larger than the authors who generated the tweets.

In the past, TV is always considered as social and conservation- driven. But now, Twitter generates the new metric to enforce the multiplier media today. It has a great prospect for the future development in TV advertisements, and investment by media buyers. Moreover, the majority of users from social TV are more likely to use Twitter more frequently  during the show than during the commercial break—which seems like a good news for the brands.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-07/twitter-impressionism-tv-gets-a-new-metric#r=hp-lst

Recently, the World Bank has cut its forecast for the economic growth of the developing countries in East Asia . It was expected to be grown by 7.8 %, but it reached 7.1% in 2013.

One of the most important factor  affect the growth forecast is that the slowdown in China’s growth and the prospects of  US stimulus measures. Slowing growth of China’s economy influence the whole economy in East Asia. Its expectation was 8.3% economic growth, however, it just reached 7.5% growth this year. The World Bank said  that the slowdown was rooted from the shifting the export-dominated economy to domestic demand.

This is a headwind for the slowdown of the domestic demand. Meanwhile, it is also a tailwind for the world economic growth. There will be some advantages and disadvantages for the slowdown of the East Asia economic growth. When they encountered with the economic challenges, they also had opportunities to develop the Asia economy.

Source: (article & picture)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24426894

Swill-cooked oil is waste animal oil and oil that has been used several times – usually by restaurants – for frying.

In China, most of resturants used the swill cooked oil for making more profits. From my point of view, it is kind of  destruction  for all Chinese citizens and our next generation. I think the restaurants should not take their profits beyond the physical health of human being. Also, it is a huge damage for the restaurant managers. They cannot avoid to go to the other restaurants for their whole life.

Moreover, there are thousands of illegal oil factories in China. The swill cooked oil is usually collected by the collectors to spread out to the nearby restaurants. So I think authorities should emphasize cleaning up illegal oil collectors to prohibit the distribution of the illegal oil.

In addition, it is really immoral to make profits by the illegal swill cooked oil. The managers should reflect on themselves about the questions.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-06/30/content_12805065.htm