This is really an interesting news and catches a lot of eyes. 

Almost everyone is surprised that Apple becomes the first company that beats Coca Cola which lasts the number one brand in the world for 13 years. According to the Interbrand ranking in 2013, we can gather a large amount information on how those brands which are familiar to us behave in this past year. As we can see from this ranking, the technology related brands are booming in recent years, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, GE, IBM and Samsung. This statistics also shows the trends of consumer choices and market trends. All of things we have learned in class can apply to this news. According to the business fundamentals, in order to be a success brand or company, it needs to be careful with their value proposition, cost structure, accounting management and their model canvas and so on. However, in my personal opinion, I don’t think that Apple would maintain the Top 1 brand as long as Coca Cola did several years ago.  The reason is that the development of IT industry and electronics has already been mature enough. It would be so hard for them to be more innovative based on current stages.

One of the shareholders of Blackberry accused the firm posting misleading and over-optimistic information about the prospects of its 10 smartphone line.

With the emerging of Apple Inc and Google Inc, Blackberry is losing market shares quickly in recent years. So that the share price of Blackberry is falling rapidly, so as the financial situation of Blackberry Inc. It is not the first time Blackberry is having conflicts with its shareholders. In addition, Blackberry is having serious financial crisis within the organization. Because of not  reaching the units of break-even, It has to cut off almost 40% of total workforce within the organization, which means Blackberry has a trouble on cash flows and expenses.

From the course we had in COMM101and this Blackberry Case, now we know the importance of having flexible cash flows, product innovation and market segmentation.The Blackberry fails to employ the original amount of workers because they do not have enough money to pay for them. They can forecast this problem early because of using break-even cost grid. This can help them to get the correct number of units they need to sell in order to run with profits. In order to back to the market, Blackberry needs to use product positioning to exploit innovative smartphones.

From this past news, we knew that the famous Canadian shoes-brand is 41 years old now. ALDO is primarily a brand that sells shoes only. Now, it has explored its markets to bags and accessories.  Personally, I am interested in this brand so I want to explore more on this brand. The product it sells is not only shoes or accessories, but also a lifestyle to those trendy young girls and women. After comm101 class,  I am glad to share my analysis of Porter’s 5 forces for this brand.

The supplier power is low, because it is easy for the manufactures to get raw materials used for making shoes. The threats of substitutes is also low because nothing in the world can replace footwear. Furthermore, the buyer power is hard to decide because consumer loyalty is hard to build in this industry. The consumers only want pretty and trendy shoes no matter what brand is it. The threats of new entries is high due to the non-existence of barriers to entry in this industry. I mean it is easy to make shoes and sell them. However, the industry rivalry is quit high as there is lots of famous brand making shoes.