A year after controlling only 15% of the market shares the new Android smartphone from Google is now taking 53% market share. This is quite an amazing feat.  Going from 15% to more then half of the entire market share is incredible.  Android was able to do this in two ways.  First of all it has a great product that consumers know and trust and the selective timing it decided to release its product.  Just days after Apple released the IPhone 4s millions of frustrated customers, who were expecting the release of the iPhone 5, opted to go for the Android that promised an excellent and sophisticated product.  A perfect example of give customers what they want.  This move caused apple to drop from 26% to 15%. This situation worked well for Android that gained millions of new customers for Apple’s mistake; an ingenious move on Android’s behalf.  So there are to ways to gain market shares either fight to get more my competition and producing a better product, or steal customers from another company that fails to impress customers. Either the way the market can be yours.

Quite recently a Chinese energy mogul, Sinopec, bought an Albertan natural gas energy company, Daylight Energy, for 2.2 billion dollars. The company’s plan would be to ship over the resources like natural gas and oil to Asia. As Narissa said this would be the first export of energy resources to Asia from Canada. Quite frankly the government should stop this kind of sly move.  Alberta is Canada’s largest resource for such energy sources; if we let foreign countries come in and buy up all our resources so they can be shipped over to other countries what will Canada be left with?  Nothing. In this time and age businesses based around resources need to think long term, although a large payout today is enticing waiting for resource prices to increase due to demand can give the same kind of benefits without selling our countries ever so valuable resources. If this export were actually to go forward I would hope the Government would intervene and stop it to save OUR resources.

News report on the purchase

As mentioned in Akash’s blog (Akash’s blog) the Japanese car manufacturer, Nissan, is making the move to Brazil to implement new manufacturing plants there.  This move can be very beneficial for Nissan, as the world is almost done recovering from the Economic problems started in 2008 it now faces troubles due to the European economy being in the bunker.  As Nissan’s greatest markets are outside of Europe is has not been as affected by the Europe crisis compared to other companies.  As this is the case Nissan has seen the great opportunities in Brazil, part of BRIC, this move could put Nissan to a whole new level of manufacturing. As said by the Globe and Mail Nissan is projected to be the third largest car manufacturer by 2015, a staggering leap from its current position.  Overall this move to Brazil will benefit Nissan in many different ways, they are making the classic move of moving in while it is cheap to do so, and in doing so they will see the benefits for many years to come.

Wurken Stiff. This innovative company has produced a revolutionary product that has taken the market by storm.  The CEO, Jonathan Boos, saw that there was a huge untapped market for men who are frustrated with plastic collar keepers.  With this being the case he developed the idea for metal collar keepers with magnets, this would ensure that the shirt collar would stay straight and close to the actual shirt (via the magnet.) Since Wurkin stiff collar keeper started it is now in thousands off major multi national stores in North American like Nordstrom, Macy’s and The Bay.  Quite  feat for an company under 5 years old.  So this company features all the traits of entrepreneurship it had large wealth creation, speed of wealth creation, innovation and risk.

Should becoming a sustainable business be a priority and goal of a business? Does the cost outweigh the benefits?  In our modern day and age we are entering a new stage of eco-friendly solutions; which means that more and more customers are expecting businesses and corporations to do its part to aid in reducing its impact and footprint on the earth.  According to the National Marketing Institute (Sustainable stats and information) consumers are willing to pay up to 20% more on a product if they no both the business and product are eco-friendly.  So maybe we as a business can take advantage of this opportunity and actually boost profits by becoming “green.” In becoming a more sustainable business there is definitely an upfront cost to change to a greener production line and costs to maintain it as such.  However, having the chance to increase profits by 20% can make this change worthwhile.  Ernst and Young believes that in the near future governments will institute different laws requiring businesses to reduce its carbon footprint by up to 25% by 2020.  So turning into a greener company may not even be a choice soon…

Since the economic troubles in 2008 car companies saw a major decline in the demand for vehicles.  Now, 3 years later we see the exact opposite happening.  There is a huge demand for cars and the manufactures can’t keep up with the orders, so many customers have cars on backorder.  (Globe and Mail) Honda has seen this and is reacting accordingly by boosting

 production.  Just as it were boosting production, the Tsunami hit Japan; as a result parts and cars were swept away and the entire supply chain was disrupted.  As a wise decision they shifted there manufacturing base and thus changing the supply chain to make it more effective for producing the cars.  This is a very smart decision; instead of trying to salvage the Japanese supply chain it has simply shifted all its resources to Canada, saving them

money and time. Now in an effort to catch up with all the orders and cars lost, the Canadian plants will be producing overtime 6 days a week. Although Honda is paying its employees overtime, a slightly larger cost than usual, the benefits out weigh the costs.

How do we define the success of a company? Is it how much their assets are worth?  How many different countries they occupy? I think they kind of go hand in hand; it’s somewhat difficult to expand a company into several different countries if you don’t have the assets or the money.  Is it worth expanding though? There is a big risk that comes with it, more competition, unknown market, and depending where you are, unstable government.

Recently a Canadian company called Teck Resources, a mining company that made the Olympic medals for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, was seeking to expand to Namibia, Africa where there is huge potential for minerals to mine.  The labour would be cheap and the investment return would be great.  So why is the company sitting idle on this opportunity?  The government.  The government is highly unstable in Namibia.  The government just incurred a large debt and the first thing they did was impose an extra 40% tax on mining companies in the country.  So even though money can be made, a new government tax can take away all profits from this investment.  So much consideration must be made to where a company expands, because it’s not always a good move….

As we go through economic ups and downs we see more and more companies merging together to produce one stronger company that can withstand more in the changing economy.  Not only does the company become stronger, it is also able to seize opportunities through a recession that it wouldn’t have been able to afford before, both in risk and in monetary funds.  According to business BC magazine the number of corporations that are merging now are nearly triple what they have done in previous years.  This isn’t just due to the recession though; merging numbers have been growing exponentially since the 1990s.

However there are many things a company must consider before merging.  What is the risk?  What are the benefits?  Several other points must be thought out before making a choice.  Funnily enough one of the biggest problems merging companies have is a new name and logo! Some just keep one of the older company’s name and logo and stay under that title while others create a whole new logo.  It’s quite interesting what they develop.

Is there a limit to what we should use as Marketing? I saw this add the other day and it made me think of the power of marketing and branding.  This is a personal safe designed for personal firearms with the slogan “the first line of defense is you ” so there is quite an insinuation in the slogan by Sentry Safe.  It seems as if they are saying should there be an intrusion of some sort in your home, you should go grab your gun because this particular safe is quiet and quick to open because “the first line of defence is you.” Have we not been taught throughout our whole lives to call the police? Call 911?  Although it does take the police time to get there is taking the law into your own hands the right choice?  Regardless of which you think is right, this add makes you think of safety in your home and ultimately that’s what everyone wants, a safe house.  So it really makes the consumer look at the options at hand. Great , powerful brand marketing.

After reading about this I had a good chuckle to myself. Recently Netflix changed their service and jacked up their prices with little to no warning for their customers.  Quite naturally there was a very negative response from their customers who were very displeased with the situation, and as a result this corporation lost nearly 1.5 million customers and had their stock drop over 15% in a day.  This is a great example of what not to do, instead, keep your customers aware of your service and your decisions.   When you see something like this it really makes you wonder what other companies might do next.  It all leads to distrust and concern.  From a consumer point of view when they see actions like this they simply choose the competition over you because the buyer has power because there are other substitutes; ultimately customers choosing the competition over us is the last thing that we want to see.  So it’s much better to be honest with customers with the significant changes within a company and that will build customer loyalty.

A week after the change, they realized their mistake and the CEO made this post on their blog . (Netflix blog/ CEO apology)