I recently read about Boya Chen’s blog China becomes worlds top gold buyer. According to the latest World Gold Council report, the weight of Gold that China purchased has raced past India’s 715 tones, reached to 798 so far for this year. And reachers even estimated that this number will break over 1000 by the end of the year.

These all due to the significant decreasing of gold price earlier this year. At that time almost all the gold bars in every jewelry store were sold out. It’s true that investment on gold some how is seen safer than venture investment but blindly purchasing along the trend usually is not a wisdom response, especially for Chinese who always like to investing based on their own consumption habit. Overbuying of one specific product can eventually cause the oversupply of the good and further depress its actual value.

      “Over 1 million PlayStation 4’s were sold in the first 24 hours after the game console went on sale early Friday, Sony said.”

“The game system is Sony’s first in seven years and includes new social features, streaming video apps and a touch pad on the controller.” Sony says it expects to sell 5 million PlayStation 4’s by the end of March and analysts expect demand will outpace the supply through Christmas. Apparently Sony want to resuscitation their consumer electronics department with the help of PS4. However, for Microsoft’s Xbox One, which will go on sale on 22nd November, the current outstanding sales data of Sony is going to be the opening shot for their competition.

Referring to Jiejie Zhao’s Blog( Huawei is building 5G wirelesses in Ottawa ) Huawei Co. Ltd., a big wireless technological Chinese company who have research institutions in Indian, United States, Sweden and Russian with more than 89000 employees planned to expand their investment to 5G technologies in Ottawa, Canada. This is a new global research and of next-generation wireless technologies, which promises to bring consumers a 100 times faster blazing data speeds. Since 2009, Huawei had started their technology research and development about 5G and they declare that they will invest 6 hundred billion more dollars on this plan.

. 

               Economist predicts long, painful housing correction

News form BNN about Canadian Housing Market

      Canada’s existing home sales fell 3.2% in October compared to September, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. No big deal right? After all housing sales were brisk through the summer and bigger picture-wise Canada’s housing market has been on a near-constant upward trajectory since 1997, hitting all-time highs on a regular basis.

Canadian housing market is overcooked and ripe for a correction.

“Housing prices don’t, can’t and won’t go up forever.”

So what makes Canadian housing price so high right now? Overbuilding is a major cause. Since more and more people realized that investment in housing will bring them relatively huge amount of income, Canadian housing market expanded rapidly. In the future, however the huge oversupply will eventually drag down the price.

                       Small business owners already hit by shutdown

Small business owners already hit by shutdown. -October. 4, 2013

    NEW YORK (CNNMoney),”The government shutdown has already caused some small businesses to lose work and money, according to a new CNNMoney/Thumbtack.com survey.”

     “General contractors are finding that they’re booking fewer jobs, and janitorial companies have lost contracts in federal buildings,” said Sander Daniels, co-founder of Thumbtack.com.

    Government roles a very important character in business chain. Any decision made by it may effectively change the business market. In this case, small business like photographers, caterers and DJs lose some job opportunities. In other case, it may directly impact the growth of a industry. Managers should be aware that market was influenced by variable elements. It is not possible to make everyone satisfied, so recognize the order of priority before making a decision.

Oops! BlackBerry even worse off than it thought. -October. 2, 2013

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

“More bad news for BlackBerry. The smartphone company said Wednesday that its business is in even worse shape than what it reported just a few weeks ago.”

BlackBerry is facing a lot of problems these days. BlackBerry announced a $965 million quarterly loss, which included a $934 million stockpile. And it’s going to cost them $400 million, which is four times of what they expect, to lay off employees in the end of the year. Also they are still keep losing customers in their key market.

The problem of BlackBerry is that they did not follow the trend in the market. They strongly keep their original product conceptual design while other companies actively investigate about what their customers are looking for and making changes according to market condition. BlackBerry said it is negotiating with Fairfax Financial, a Canadian insurance company, to be taken private. About BalckBerry’s future the only thing we know is if BlackBerry is going to improve their products by clear understanding of the market and their targets, they will be saved.

                        Company jet too pricey? Rent one by the hour

 VistaJet hopes to shake up the U.S private jet market. – Oct.7,2013

One main selling points of VistaJet, an European-based private jet airline, is its plane-for-rent business model, which allows customers rent private jet by the hour. That’s different from most other U.S.-based private jet companies, which require flyers to buy or to share an aircraft with others.

“Coming out of the financial crisis, people realize that an investment in an aircraft is not necessarily the right investment,” Flohr told CNNMoney. “A much better solution is to [approach flying] as a service.”

This is a great example of creating market differentiation. Exploring international market is challengeable but this time VistaJet found out a new area where they can utilize as a stepping stone. Their new business model attracted medias and spread informations to their potential customers. They also gave clients a specific reason for choosing them instead of USA companies. Making a difference with competitors is efficient for both competition and propaganda.

China fines Wal-mart, Carrefour for cheating customers

In Jan. 27, 2011, China fined Wal-mart and Carrefour cheating on the price of certain items. They raised the original price while sales promotions or charged customers higher than actual price. Later in that day Wal-Mart (China) and Carrefour both apologized to their customers and promised to strictly monitor the prices in the future.

In the business world, integrity and brand image are the two most important parts that all companies should focus in any case. Any kinds of mistakes in those area will absolutely affect the market even with a perfect public relations strategy. Indeed, apologize is the first thing that mangers should do while being beset with a business ethics crisis, but what to do after the apologize decides whether the company can regaining the trusts from their customers.

Video from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju2NllblPPc