In response to Genie Chang’s “Oh No You Didn’t! Snapchat Rejected Facebook”, she mentions that Snapchat turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook. There are unique features about Snapchat but I personally think Snapchat missed an opportunity to grow with Facebook. I don’t think Snapchat can last very long on its own, in fact, I think it’s one of those apps that was “hot” for a few months and will eventually fade away. This reminds me of “Candy Crush Saga”, when everyone used to play and send each other tickets to move on to the next stage or more lives. Nowadays, you rarely see people playing “Candy Crush Saga”, I thought it was a smart move to sell it to a big corporation like Facebook when the app reached its peak.

Blog:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/geniechang/2013/11/15/oh-no-you-didnt-snapchat-rejected-facebook/

As I was reading Karina Furuya’s “Are Consumers No Longer Eating Cereal For Breakfast?”, I agreed with her points how the demand of cereal is slowly decreasing and Kellogg’s must change their product line to maintain or increase their revenue. In today’s society, people are starting to wake up late which in results, skip breakfast and grab snacks such as Greek yogurt and granola bars as an alternative to cereal on their way to school or work. People are starting to be health conscious about what they consume, therefore, if Kellogg’s want to stay competitive, Kellogg’s must know what their consumers’ needs are and modify their product. I agree with Karina Furuya’s ideas, she mentioned some examples for Kellogg’s to stay competitive by “branching out their cereal business to a healthier, low sugar line or create a new breakfast product other than cereal.”

Blog:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/karina08/2013/11/15/53/

Ilana and Noam Kenig created a business to help individuals get their lost data back, such as, important documents and precious baby pictures. However, once the business started, they realized that the individual market isn’t there.

Ilana and Noam Kenig noticed a need for businesses and not individuals which helped them re-target their customer segment to small businesses that need to back-up their customer information and accounting documents. For Ilana and Noam Kenig, maintaining the enthusiasm is the key to their success. They invest in research and development to stay ahead of their industry, and constantly create and improve services to meet their customer’s needs and to expand their company’s potential.

Ilana and Noam Kenig’s successful story shows that lean start-up business are usually better as 75% of traditional start-up businesses fail.

Check out more information about Ilana and Noam Kenig:
http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/around-bc/meet-ilana-and-noam-kenig-restoring-data-inc
Reference statistic from here:
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ehost/detail?vid=4&sid=a913e837-00c6-4479-9f1a-76ee8588b09a%40sessionmgr14&hid=25&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=87039866

Is there a new start for Blackberry now that Blackberry gave $16 million to Thorsten Heins?

John Chen steps to the plate to be the CEO of Blackberry. Chen is receiving a yearly salary of $1 million and along with a bonus of $2 million. He has been awarded 13 million restricted shares in Blackberry, currently worth about $85 million. A quarter of the shares will become payable after three years, another quarter after four years, and the remaining 50% after five years. This deal seems to help John Chen to be aligned with the company by recovering and hopefully, make Blackberry become a successful business again. I believe that John Chen can turn Blackberry into a successful company again in the next 10 years due to his successful story where he became the CEO of a troubled business, Sybase and sold the company to SAP for $5.8 billion.

John Chen reminds me of Steve Jobs as Steve Jobs was in charge of Apple when Apple was worthless. Steve Jobs turned Apple into a successful business and people with the shares when Apple was worthless is probably millionaires now. Apple was rising but after Steve Jobs’s death, Apple is lacking uniqueness and innovation. This gives me hope that John Chen might be able to turn Blackberry around.

Check out more information about John Chen:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/heinss-golden-handshake-could-be-as-much-as-22-million/article15241300/
http://allthingsd.com/20131111/john-chen-is-blackberrys-88-million-man/

It was record high on Friday, November 8 and today, November 11, it’s record high again in the stock market! Can you predict what’s going to happen tomorrow? It’s definitely hard to predict the stock market because tomorrow can be the record high again or fall dramatically.

Traditionally, based on the current economic data, economists can predict how the stocks will rise or fall. Traditionally, if the economic data is good, the stocks will go up but if the economic data is bad, the stocks will go down.

Now in today’s society, if the economic data is good, somehow stocks can go down because the government will stop printing money which will hurt the stock market, so how can we predict the results of the stock market? We cannot predict if the stocks will go up or down which turns the stock market as a gambling game like one big Casino. One day, someone can invest in the right stocks at the right time and earn billions of dollars, however, someone can be the poorest person in the world. Overall, the stock market is an unpredictable gambling game!

Check out the article about the record high of November 11, 2013:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-futures-flat-market-takes-125645571.html

Apple iPad Air was recently released yesterday (November 1, 2013). It has been a tradition for Apple products that customers camp out the day before any Apple product release in stores. As with any Apple product release, customers hold certain expectations. With the release of iPhone 5C that didn’t go well not long ago (More information in my previous blog post), customers were hopefully expecting something exciting with the iPad Air.

Once again, customers were disappointed. Customers felt a wave of regret wash over them. They paid so much for the iPad Air that they didn’t honestly really like. People felt that the iPad Air didn’t deserve the “Air” name. For instance, the weight of the iPhone 5 shocked the customers how light it was compared to the iPhone 4/4s. Another issue was it was uncomfortable to hold with one hand and to type on the iPad Air. The biggest issue that customers had was the iPad Air didn’t have Touch ID. The newest technology, Touch ID was added to the iPhone 5s home button allowing users to register to five fingerprints that may unlock the device in seconds by touching the home button. It’s an important security feature considering it’s efficient and lowers the stolen or lost rate on Apple products. However, this feature wasn’t on the iPad Air, which ultimately disappointed majority of the customers.

Overall, customers felt that the advertising for iPad Air as “Air” felt like false advertising, the iPad Air lacks of uniqueness, its speed changes are barely noticeable and its lack of Touch ID on the iPad Air was upsetting for everyone.

Check out the reviews by customers:
http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-ipad-5-air-review-3-major-disappointments-new-fifth-generation-ipad-1452788

Don’t you hate it when you have to make time out of your day to go to the bank to deposit your cheques? Especially when you arrive to the bank, you see a huge line up in front of you, expecting a 30 minutes wait until you get to the counter?

ING DIRECT Canada recently made an app that will solve those questions! Cheque-In is an app that allows customers to take a picture of the cheque and the money will be transferred to your bank account instantly. This current marketing strategy will increase sales as younger generations are starting to work in the workforce and pretty much every teen has a smartphone in today’s society. By using Cheque-In, ING DIRECT Canada cuts labour costs. Cheque-In is more efficient as a server will keep all the data accurately instead of having endless copies of paper done by bankers/tellers.

Cheque-In is through Internet which can be dangerous as there will be many hackers trying to hack into the system. The Internet is something that is hard for older generations to learn, therefore, Cheque-In will not be efficient towards older generations. Older generations prefer the experience of going to the bank and having a conversation with bankers/tellers. Some may prefer paper copies to keep track the bank amount from time to time as well.

More Information about Cheque-In:
http://www.ingdirect.ca/en/landingpage/chequein/faq.html

During my break, I decided to go to the Sauder library to study and get some readings done. I sat down and all of a sudden, two Sauder boys that I know, started yelling at each other about something that happened yesterday and something to do with inappropriate things to one of the boy’s girlfriend. Everyone dropped their pencils and looked up to see what’s going on. A few people in the library screamed “Nobody wants to see this, take it outside please.” One of the boy knew that the yelling caught a lot of attention so he got fired up and pushed the other boy to make a big scene. Both of the boys’ faces were tomato red but the crowd kept saying “Take it outside!”, they eventually ended the fight and walked opposite ends. As you can see, mob mentality is a BIG factor. If the people in the library chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, things would have been worse.

This also reminded me of how I choose which restaurants I want to eat at. When a new restaurant opens up, my heart desires to try new foods but my mind wouldn’t let me until I see how many people are in the restaurant before I enter. If I see nobody in the restaurant, I most likely wouldn’t walk in because it’s extremely awkward for me. If there’s a lot of people, I probably will run in and try to get a number to wait for a table.

Another example about mob mentality is buying jade. When I went back to China to visit family, one of the main things my family values is jade. For a business, it’s extremely hard to get someone to buy jade. A mob mentality strategy is the successful way to get more customers to buy jade. I noticed when we go to jade stores, the manager or sales associate will ask what your preferences is in jade (colours, styles, Buddha, zodiac), they get you interested, however, they also know you feel uneasy buying it. Therefore, they have their elder family members come by and compliment how it’s beautiful the jade you picked and bargain to buy it. This tactic will make you to pull your wallet out to buy it ASAP. This tactic is successful in making money, however, if you cheat the customers as in giving them fake jade, they probably will not come back and the business will eventually declare bankruptcy.

Apple launching iPhone 5C and 5S at the same time didn’t turn out as expected! iPhone 5S sold out on the first day it launched. However, iPhone 5C inventory is sitting in the backroom waiting for an owner. Everyone expected that iPhone 5C will target cheaper consumers but with the price of $599, nobody will buy it. There’s only a $120 difference from the price of iPhone 5C to iPhone 5S. Therefore, we can see why consumers would pay a little extra for a better phone (iPhone 5S). On the Apple website, iPhone 5S all colours are sold out and iPhone 5C is available in any colours and can be shipped to you within 24 hours. This shows that there’s a lot of iPhone 5C inventory in Apple’s backroom.

In my opinion, iPhone 5C should be only half the price of iPhone 5S because iPhone 5C is a plastic phone. Without Steve Jobs, Apple doesn’t have anymore innovations and they are lacking on the marketing. In my perspective, Apple seems to target the same customer segment since there’s not much of a difference in the price of iPhone 5C ($599) and iPhone 5S ($719).

See the article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/iphone-5c-number-apple_n_3941101.html

Check out the price and inventory here:
http://store.apple.com/ca/buy-iphone/iphone5s
http://store.apple.com/ca/buy-iphone/iphone5c

Blackberry investors are filing a law suit against Blackberry CEO (Thorsten Heins) and CFO (Brian Bidulka) for misleading the investors that the Blackberry Z10 has a good prospect. The investors also blamed Ontario-based smartphone maker for not warning the investors that Blackberry is not on the recovery road. Blackberry CEO and CFO knew the Blackberry Z10 was probably going to be a fail yet they still told the investors that it’s going to be the best thing in the world. Blackberry CEO and CFO shouldn’t exaggerate how it’s the best thing in the world. Blackberry obviously doesn’t have business ethnics at all.

However, in my opinion, it’s not just Blackberry’s fault! Investors must accept their loss and move on because serious investors should have done their own research. Two years ago, Blackberry faced a law suit on its financial condition and the prospects of the PlayBook tablet. The U.S. judge threw out the law suit so why do the investors think this law suit with the failed launch of Blackberry Z10 will succeed? Investors shouldn’t just rely on what the CEO and CFO say and invest then when it’s a fail launch, expect the law suit to get their money back to them.

See the article here:
http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/blackberry-faces-class-action-suit-us-052308162.html