According to the financial report, The smartphone maker Blackberry lost approximately a billion dollars in its second quarter. Its revenue was down around 50% compared with the same period last year. Those financial result shows that the hardware environment are really competitive right now as Blackberry seems to fail in this game. The T-mobile from the states has announced that they will never sell any Blackberry product in the future.In addition, a Toronto-based FairFax financial holding suggest to buyout Blackberry with 4.7 Billion last week and Blackberry seems to agree on this deal. Does BlackBerry has any opportunity to recover back to its golden age?

From my research, it shows that Blackberry has already failed in the competition with Apple or Samsung. The reason is Blackberry is really late in the game and they cannot make an efficient decision. When the first iPhone came out, it marks a historical change on the development of technology. Blackberry is still producing their key-pad smartphone to the public while people start to think about change to a touch-pad phone. If BlackBerry realized this early and change their marketing strategy, It could avoid the situation happened right bow which is a buyout plan from other company. In the other side, After Samsung enter the smartphone market, Blackberry just found out that smartphone is a trending market on the mobility market. However, when they start to produce their Blackberry Z10, which is a touch-pad smart phone from Blackberry. Apple’s iPhone is already in its fourth generation and Samsung is on its third generation. Both of Apple and Samsung has already reserve around 70% market shares in the market. Blackberry has been isolated. Nowadays, Blackberry is not facing the challenges from Apple and Samsung, it also faces the challenges from Google and Microsoft. Microsoft just bought Nokia to expand its development on smartphone market. However, The overall health of Blackberry is not really bleak even they are losing in their investment. The BlackBerry has no debt and certain amount of cash flow. The most valuable part is its operation system, which has approximately 72 million subscribers. The best way for Blackberry is selling its company to Fairfax or keep innovating its product to attract more users. Otherwise, it is the end of Blackberry.

From

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/don-pittis-who-would-want-to-buy-a-blackberry-1.1330202

http://www.cbc.ca/news/does-blackberry-have-a-future-1.1862945

China recently launches its new free trade zone in Shanghai, China as a major step for their economic experimentation. It means that China might has its intention to upgrade its economic structure from socialism to capitalism. It has been reported that 25 Chinese and foreign companies were grants to start their branch in the zone. The goal of zone is to encourage foreign investment, upgrade its financial service in 18 sectors in the country’s tightly regulated service industry such as shipping, law and engineering or medical institutions. Generally speaking, Shanghai is trying to surpass HongKong by setting up a similar economic structure in Mainland China.

What does it mean by Chinese government set up a free trade zone in Shanghai? From my analysis, China is trying to expand its economics development to surpass United States. Moreover, China will remove the Great Wall restriction on the foreign website such as Facebook or YouTube. People is not allowed to access Facebook,twitter or other foreign website in the past.It displayed Chinese government seems prepared to release some controls to put its all effort to promote its free trade zone as a International finance center to compete New york City, London and Hong Kong. I personally China is going to set up its free trade zone in every province if the Shanghai free trade zone is determined to be an successful example. Now, The Chinese community is enjoying the business opportunity offered by the internet. Only revolution will make them become better and better. In the coming days, the Shanghai free trade zone will aim to prove itself as a transformative model for China’s economic structure and inspires of the rest of communism countries such as North Korea.

A man is walking in front of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

From http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1320509/china-launches-its-first-free-trade-zone-shanghai

Recently, Apple has revealed its new product iPhone 5s to the public. The people around the World are getting excited on its new security function which is a fingerprint scanner. The new iPhone 5s seems provide a more secure options to protect privacy from their users. However, Did the user think about where will their fingerprint goes? Apple’s database or the NSA (National Security Agency)?

So far, Apple hasn’t declare any official statement regarding this concern. Yesterday, while everyone is concerning about USA government shut itself down and put approximately 800000 people out of work, a hacker organization released a video statement to claim a relationship between AuthenTec, which developed the iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner and U.S government. The AuthenTec Company is used to produce to wireless equipment or electric system for US government in defense or commercial sector. Is that legit and ethics for Apple to collect fingerprint from their users?

From my analysis, it shows that Apple should not store any fingerprint in its database because this will violate the business ethics and destroy its brand value. If the public found out Apple has any intention to forward its fingerprints database to the third-party, the result will become barrier for Apple to increase its brand value and decrease its brand image. People will avoid its product because of the scandal. As a international cooperation, Apple has the responsibilities to protect all their client information and not leak to other parties.It doesn’t say that Apple will use the fingerprint for NSA to spy on someone but it is not hard to believe that NSA would collect each fingerprint data from every iPhone 5S. Apple should be aware on those problem and declared their official statement as soon as possible.

Picture From Patrick McGuire

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-iphones-fingerprint-scanner-has-shady-government-ties-anonymous-says