Month: November 2010

One of my previous article focused on Sony’s response to iphone, and now I want to analyze Nokia’s reaction to Apple’s growing sales and its status as product leader. Just 10 years ago, Nokia was seen as the leader of the cell phone world and now its influence is slowly deceasing as shown by its sales in the US. This is not just a coincidence, in fact, even Sony can also relate to losing sales to Apple.

Since Apple focuses all of its marketing effort of in iphone, it has an advantage over both Sony and Nokia. Nokia has recently started to focus on its apps and improve their Ovi app store. It announced that it is seeing around 3 million download per day and 8.5 millions a month.
Apple’s dominance in market share is evident in North America, however in all over the world Nokia still dominates the market share with around 38.6%.

However, what is worrying for Nokia is that Apple’s market share has almost tripled from last year and is continuing to increase. In my opinion, Nokia needs to challenge Apple’s iphone by coming up with a new product to match iphone’s appeal.

Here is an article talking about this new messaging service:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8136764/Facebooks-email-service-is-about-capturing-the-next-generation-of-web-users.html

The fastest growing social network, Facebook, now wants to incorporate its network hub to include email services. With already 500 million users, Facebook’s entrance into the messaging service industry could lead to a new era for modern messaging. With its new email services, Facebook has directly challenged the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo.

In fact the co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that they are trying to “push the way people do messaging more towards this simple, real-time, immediate personal experience.” This seems to be their competitive advantage; the idea that email services can be more personal and intimate to the users.

While doing some research, I found that the announcement of Facebook’s new plan directly affects Gmail, who recently suffered an outage and are facing difficulties retaining customers. Since over 70% of the current Facebook users use the current messaging function, with the new email service Facebook can expect to influence these people into switching from Microsoft, Yahoo etc to Facebook.

With the recent trend in increased use of smartphones, Sony has decided to expand their market share by entering the cell phone market. With devices such as PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and the PSP, Sony has already established themselves as the product leader in the video game consoling market. With their new PSP phone, Sony had attempted to match Apple’s iphone 4.

These Smartphones will be capable of downloading and playing PSP games. It is set to be released in late 2010 and is expected to garner a lot of sales. In my opinion, this new Smartphone is targeted to the potential 15-20 young males who prefer a convenient form of video game. While doing my research, I also found that Sony’s cell phone sales had gone down 41% in 2009. This new Smartphone is probably an attempt by Sony to regain their lost sales. While evaluating this segment’s attractiveness, I am convinced that Sony is identifiable, substantial, and reachable.

However, Sony might run into problems while trying to ensure the customers remain responsive to their new Smartphone and iPhone is still regarded as the top-notch Smartphone thus the new PSP phone might not be all that profitable afterall.

Inspired by an article written by Carlo Garganese, “If Diego Milito Isn’t One Of The 23 Best Players Of 2010, Then Football Is Dead”, I felt compelled to give my insight on this issue.

Here is his article: http://www.goal.com/en/news/2724/ballon-dor/2010/10/27/2185572/ballon-dor-comment-if-diego-milito-isnt-one-of-the-23-best

One of the best players of world in 2010, Diego Milito, was excluded from the nomination for the FIFA Ballon d’Or. Despite having scored 30 goals in all competition for Inter and leading them to the League title, League cup, and the UEFA Champions League, Diego Milito wasn’t considered on of the 23 best players in the world.

While other players like Cesc Fabregas (utterly useless for Arsenal and a sub for Spain) make it to the list, I ask the question why are the worthy players left out from the list? The simple answer is that FIFA considers the marketing prospect of the nominees so they can make money from this precious award. While players like Cesc Fabregas have huge marketing potential because of media exposure, Diego Milito is a pure football player.

While Cesc Fabregas make millions promoting underwear, shirts, and shoes, Diego Milito just plays football. So what is more important playing football, scoring goals, and singlehandedly winning your team trophies? OR promoting merchandise, being a sub for a world cup winning team, and being utterly useless for your club?

Here are the stats, you be the judge:
Milito:
30 goals in all competiton, 22 in Serie A.
Serie A title, Serie Cup, and the UEFA Champions League

Fabregas:
19 goals in all competition, 15 in EPL
A useless sub for Spain’s World Cup winning team.

I realize I have made this blog directly a Milito vs. Fabregas but it was important to understand how flawed the nomination process for FIFA Balon d’Or. The negative impact of marketing in the nomination process is a disrespect to the great players like Diego Milito who despite being one of the top 5 players in the world in 2010, are not considered one of the top 23 best players in the world.