Source:

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/samsung-mocks-apples-iphone-6-watch-in-new-ads-20140912-10fxp3.html

Samsung and Apple in recent years have become direct competitors in the cell phone market, with the two firms products being the most successful in the market.

In September Apple unveiled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus stating that this is the biggest innovative change in iPhones since the first iPhone was unveiled. The demand for this product was high with people lining for day just to get their hands on the brand new iPhone, but soon after the release of the iPhone 6, many found that the phone in fact bended easily when placed in the pocket.

With this negative publicity due to the fault in the product, Samsung decided to add to that with a series of advertisements parodying the iPhone 6’s and Apple iWatch release. Samsung mocked Apple’s marketing gimmicks such as the phone being thinner and bigger and made it out to seem that the “innovative changes” were not innovative at all.

Although humorous, the statement “there is no such thing as bad publicity” may be appropriate here, as Samsung is indirectly but obviously mocking Apple more than they are promoting their own products in the advertisements, thus the campaign of parodies may in fact help promote Apple’s releases even more, which is irony at its best.

Ultimately both companies produce products with great demand but there is always the design aspect of Apple products that seem to lure in customers, even if Samsung’s products may have superior technology.

Nevertheless, it is always entertaining to see such rivalry on a huge scale and it is apparent with both the companies sales that this will continue as both succeed.

Source:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102020026

In September 2014, a Chinese E-Commerce website IPO’d, becoming a public limited company selling stocks on the international stock exchange.

This IPO just so happened to be the largest one in history, with raised US$25 Billion.

This is very surprising for a website to generate such a large amount being relatively unknown to most. The main selling point that makes Alibaba so unique is the fact that Alibaba owns a numerous number of websites and businesses, the mains one listed below:

Taobao Marketplace: A Chinese online shopping market place that is also the most popular e-commerce application in China.

TMall: The largest retail and brand website in China that sells directly from the brands to the customers.

1688.com: A wholesale website for international customers selling various items from furniture to clothes.

Alipay: An online payment service, much like Paypal.

Aliyun: Cloud services

Overall, Alibaba as a company has innovated, taken inspiration from companies from around the world and brought that all together in China making it an extremely successful corporation, owning many successful businesses, which explains why they IPO did so well. But the one concerning fact is the lack of brand recognition globally considering they are a large company. Although now the company has gained a lot of recognition from the IPO and are expanding globally, so it is apparent that their business model has changed and that the company is bound to be successful.

Source:

https://www.aclu.org/net-neutrality

The basic principles of the issue on net neutrality involve large telecommunication giants that the majority of individuals use to access the internet such as Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, and Charter, having the power to control and manipulate data provided and received by individuals over the internet.

This idea of controlling and manipulating data involves various aspects that would be considered unethical, but mainly the fact that these corporations would be able to speed up the speed and traffic of people accessing websites that pay these corporate giants, as well as slowing down the speeds of competitor websites and other websites that do not pay these corporations.

The removal of net neutrality would allow these telecommunication giants to rapidly increase their revenues and profit heavily from payments from websites, which is beneficial from the perspective of these corporate giants as well as the websites paying these corporations as the speeds would be increased. Although from the perspective of other stakeholders such as websites that cannot afford to pay the telecommunication giants and the various users of the internet that use such service providers, the whole concept of net neutrality is unjust and unfair as the previous notion of internet equality and a medium where businesses can prosper is diminished completely.

Due to the oligopolistic nature of the market it is apparent that the removal of net neutrality may occur as the firms would prosper so potentially the only way for such a unethical business model to be stopped would be from government involvement , but the telecommunication lobby in the government may make that very difficult to do. All we can do is appeal and hope that the freedom of the internet does not end and that it does not become a controlled system by the corporations.