Lisa Wong

Apple’s rapid success has threatened the long-term survival of many other competitors in the industry, like Research In Motion (RIM) and Nokia. Since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, Apple’s five-year gain has increased to 400 percent while RIM and Nokia have lost almost half of their stock market value. However, the iPhone itself was not the main cause of RIM and Nokia’s downfall since both companies were already creating smartphones. The main cause was that Apple leveraged their products with a vast community of inventions around their company brand, like an ecosystem. Apple’s community brand includes inventions like iTunes and a variety of apps that work well other Apple brand products, like the iPhone. With a large community brand, Apple has sustained a large portion of the electronic device market, which makes survival difficult for competing companies.

Apple's Vast Product Community Brand

Many have speculated whether if Apple has started to lose it’s magic, like RIM and Nokia, especially with the passing of Steve Jobs. As Ernest Fung mentioned in his blog, Apple’s lack of innovation of releasing an extended version of the 4th generation iPhone, instead of the highly anticipated iPhone 5, will benefit other competitors in the mobile device industry. This will be an opportunity for companies to regain market shares that they once lost to Apple and to reinforce their survival in the industry. However, this window of opportunity is quite narrow because Apple has announced that they will release the iPhone 5 on October 14th, 2011, which will add to their large community brand.

iPhone 4S

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/eric-reguly/how-apple-outsmarted-rim-and-nokia/article2195146/

Recently, Netflix decided to increase their prices for U.S. subscribers because they wanted to provide “more choice” for their customers. In July, this price increase only applied for new subscribers but since September 1st, existing subscribers have also been subjected to pay these raised prices. Before this change, customers only had to pay $9.99 (U.S.) a month to watch unlimited online streaming movies and to receive DVDs in the mail. However, customers now have to pay $15.98 (U.S.) for the same bundled package or $7.99 (U.S.) for either streaming movies or mailed DVDs.

Two weeks after this price increase, many subscribers made an impacting choice “to walk away from Netflix altogether” (Globe and Mail). This choice was made by so many of Netflix’s subscribers that by next month, Netflix estimated that they will have a decrease of one million subscribers than predicted in its last earnings report.

Netflix's Logo

In my view, Netflix has made a poor and hasty decision that has really damaged their business and their brand. They did not have the content or enough customer incentive to justify their raise in prices, which caused a tremendous drop in their subscribers. Netflix has to make significant improvements to repair the damages made, especially since their competition has been heating up. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, should learn about elasticity, as explained on Sharon Shi’s blog, to fully understand how to achieve subscriber happiness and to prevent this downturn from happening in the future.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/netflix-lowers-us-subscriber-forecast/article2167137/

From the investigations conducted by Greenpeace, it has been reported that the textile industry in China has been releasing a range of hazardous chemicals into the ocean, which has contributed to the global problem of toxic water pollution. The pollution ejected from these textile factories contained chemicals with hormone-disrupting properties that are harmful to human health and to the World’s delicate ecosystem.

A pipe from a factory dumps foul smelling waste water into the river

As investigations continued, Greenpeace discovered that these polluting factories in China were associated with many top North American clothing brands. Brands such as Adidas, Calvin Klein, Nike, Puma, Converse, Abercrombie & Fitch, H&M, Lacoste, and Ralph Lauren were using these factories as manufacturers even though they were aware that, as a result of production, hazardous chemicals were being released. Instead of allowing their suppliers to pollute, I believe that these majors brands should be working with their manufactures to influence other companies around the globe of the ethical and environmental initiative to eliminate the releases of toxic chemicals in the ocean.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/Dirty-Laundry/