All posts by admin

Christmas season: American mobile shopping traffic is higher than PC’s

It is the shopping season for Christmas again. This season started from this Thursday to next Monday. According to the IBM prediction, mobile shopping traffic will be exceeded to PC’s for the first time.

christmas

It is convenient to use smartphones to shop with the internet development. Mobile becomes the top one device for accessing to internet. Mobile shopping traffic will be exceeded to PC’s for online shopping.

IBM predicted that mobile shopping traffic would account for 56.9% of the total shopping amounts. It would exceed the one in last year, accounting for 48.5%. it would be the first time that mobile shopping traffic exceeds PC’s.

Some people might avail of smartphones to do window shopping. So, the above figure is the rate of visiting traffic. It is reported that the sales volume of mobile shopping will account for 36.1%, while it received 27% of the total sales volume last year.

To promote the mobile online shopping, Apple and Google launched Apple Pay and Android Pay to bring the convenience for clients.

It has security risk for mobile online shopping when purchasing or paying the orders. It takes time for mobile online shopping at some online stores.

NRF predicted that American retail turnover will increase by 3.7% during the Christmas shopping season, while it increased by 4.1% last year.

It predicted that three fourths of online retail traffic of Walmart would come from smartphones, and the left is from PC. Mobile online shopping traffic was over 50% of the total traffic in the past two years.

eBay’s third quarter earnings indicated the turnover of mobile shopping account for 41%. It is possible that the proportion of mobile shopping turnover will increase during this Christmas shopping season.

Microsoft offers special discounts for Black Friday

The promotion for American Black Friday is coming soon. Microsoft announced its preferential measures and it will start the sales promotion for the theme of 10 cents.

black friday

ZDNET reported that Microsoft’s most important software Windows 10 contains the key word 10, thus it use 10 for its sales promotion theme for Black Friday. Its promotion will last for 10 days. 10 cents are the promotion price for many of its products.

Microsoft claimed that it would offer about one thousand digital products at 10 cents for their promotion prices to its Windows 10 users. Those digital products refer to software, movie and game.

Microsoft Xbox One console and another gaming software will be sold at $299, while Windows 10 personal computer will be promoted at $ 150.

In addition, digital music albums are promoted at the price of one dollar, including Jack White’s Lazaretto.

To attract its game players, Microsoft Xbox live will offer the first month subscription at one dollar.

Microsoft tranfers its light disk service to montly subscription service. It announced a promotion measure for application service bundled. This service includes Office 365, Xbox Live prime membership, Skype IP Phone, Wi-Fi hotspot. The users only need to pay $149 for the first year’s subscription.

If you wish to purchase Microsoft products, the special offers for Black Friday sound reasonable.

 

Microsoft teamed up with HP to develop Cloud Computing business

Microsoft announced on November 18 that it made deal with HP for cooperation and updated its key Cloud Computing software suit for attracting more clients.

HP enterprise just finished its spin-offs. Microsoft and HP announced in 2014 that they would develop the Cloud Computing and consulting business together. Lately, they announced to target HP enterprise’s regular clients on the basis of Windows 10 products.

HP claimed it would shrink its cloud computing service in October, that is Helion public clouds. Helion public clouds offer the pure computing sources to its clients. It will continue to offer cloud computing application. Chris Moyer added it will offer the popular Office 365 suite with the cooperation of Microsoft.

Microsoft will make full use of Windows instant service with the cooperation of HP. The users can update their windows system by default under such mode. Ajit Modliar suggests that it bring convenience for enterprises to manage computing softwares.

Microsoft and HP also cooperated to develop applications for auto industry. They aim to retail, energy and transportation sections to launch the new products and services.

Microsoft released on Thursday that it updated Dynamics of ERP. Dynamics can help enterprises to manage accounting, storage, manufacturing and HR to rival with products of SAP and Oracle.

Microsoft realized the acquisition of Great Plains Software in 2001, and Navision in 2002 to march into ERP market. Its latest ERP version is Dynamics AX 2012.

Apple Pay available in Canada and Australia this week

Apple Pay was released last year. To enhance its competitiveness, Apple firm is going to introduce it to more countries, banks and merchants.

Apple Pay is available in Canada since this Tuesday. It plans to bring Apple Pay to Australia on Thursday. In fact, mobile payments are more popular in those two countries than in United States. As Apply Pay is initially introduced to these two markets, it only accepts Amercian Express Card for payment.

applepay

Apply Pay is compitable with Visa card, MasterCard, Express, and Discover since its release. It will support over 100 card issuers from this Tuesday. In UK, it will support Tesco and TSB to use its payment service.

There are also other mobile payments launched. Google released its Android Pay a few months ago. And Samsung introduced its Samsung Pay. Android Pay and Samsung Pay aim to Android devices, while Apple Pay aims to Apple devices.

Jennifer Bailey claims that the reason for supporting American Express Card in Canada and Australia is that American Express is both issuer and mobile operator. It offers convenience for their cooperation.

Visa Card and MasterCard are issued by banks and they require to testify user accounts when they apply Apply Pay.

Apple is looking for more cooperations with mobile payment manufacturers in order to attract more merchants to use Apply Pay. There were only 200,000 devices accept Apple Pay when it was released. Apple Pay is estimated to be applied by more than 1.5 million devices. Apple confirmed that there are average 100, 000 small and medium-sized businesses support Apple Pay per month.

Apple revealed on Tuesday Cinnabon will fully support Apple Pay next year. Domino will apply Apple Pay by the end of the year. Starbucks is on trial this year.

Apple Pay members are increasing, but there are still millions of merchants use the outdated accounting system so that they could not support Apple Pay.

 

Evernote COO submitted resignation

Linda Kozlowski, the COO of Evernote has submitted resignation recently. She will be supposed to leave office by the end of this year.

evernote

Evernote has been suffering a series of adjustments inside this year. It appoited new COO, cut job opportunities, close down offices and cancel the launch of products.

It is unclear why Linda Kozlowski leaves Evernote. It is worth noting that she joined Evernote three years ago and was appointed as COO this summer.

It is rumored that there will be 4 more senior managers leaving Evernote in the following months.

It implied that conflicts sustain inside the company. Evernote was founded in 2007. So far, it obtains 100 million users. It financed $290 million from Sequoia and Morgenthaler.

It seems Evernote doesn’t develop well as predict. It was criticized for lack of products priorities. Some applications and services were shut down quickly after their release. What is more, it failed to obtain more subscribers from its existing users.

Many of the senior managers were appointed during Phil Libin worked as its CEO, it is unexpected for their dimission. Even though Libin still works as Evernote’s chairman of the board of directors, he doesn’t show up a lot for daily routine  due to he works as the co-founder of General Catalyst at the same time.

Libin considered Linda Kozlowski as the key figure to help Evernote march into new market and business section when he appointed her as the COO.

Evernote and Kozlowski do not response for her dimission yet.

Alibaba plans to set up two more branches in US

Forbes quoted Michael Evans’ statement that Alibaba plans to set up new branches in other two US cities. There will be five cities to attract branded retailers for its domestic clients.

aliba

Michael Evans who is responsible for international business of Alibaba suggests that the company will set up new branches in New York city and Washington D.C. by the end of this year or the first quarter of 2016.

Alibaba has set up offices in Seattle, San Francisco and San Mateo. Its offices will major distribute in the West Coast and East Coast.

Alibaba adjusts its internationalization strategy, focusing on introducing the oversea branded retailers to China so that to sell goods to the Chinese customers. In face, the imported products are also one of the promoted themes on November 11 promotion.

The company will analyze what kind of imported goods or oversea brands that Chinese customers prefer from the November 11 purchasing records.

Alibaba is also busy in exploring its business in European market. It set up the London office as the European headquarter for business management lately. The company will continue to open its new office in France, Germany and Italy in the hope of attracting more sellers.

Alibaba once took over some e-commerce business in US and open the online stores for US consumers but failed. Alibaba is incompetent to rival with Amazon there. After that, Alibaba attracted and cooperated with branded sellers for domestic e-commerce platform.

In addition, Alibaba invested great amount of sum in mobile internet startups in US and India, such as it invested about $600 million on a mobile payment company in India.

Snapchat website traffics doubled

snapchat

It is reported that the large gap between Snapchat and Facebook is narrowing. They are closer for the website traffics subject to video displays.

The views for daily videos on Snapchat increased by twice since this May, accounting to 6 billion times. Facebook announced last week that its views of daily video reached 8 billion times.

From the statistics, Facebook’s traffics are from both desktop users and mobile devices, while Snapchat’s traffics are all from smartphones users. Snapchat confirmed the news about the 6 billion views but it did not make any further comments.

Videos is the most popular content among the social networking applications. Videos are the important source for the revenue of social networking platform according to the analyst’s prediction. The click rate for videos is higher than static images or characters.

At the earning conference held last week, Mark Zuckerburg stated: ” videos will be the most attracted content among social networking service in the following years.” Facebook aims to beat YouTube as its monthly active users reach 1 billion people. Snapchat reveals that its daily active users is over 100 million.

Zuckerburg indicates that the content for those videos display on video platforms and TV are different. It requires the producers to adjust its production methods.

“The traditional medias and content production need be narrowed to meet the online consumers’ demand. The demands for brief and specified content increase fast. There are challenges to achieve our goals.,”said Zuckerburg.

 

Apple sets up subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh city

minh

Apple just set up a subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam in the hope of directly importing and selling smartphones in Vietnam. Vietnam is one of the fastest growing market for smartphones in the Asian-Pacific region.

According to the record of Vietnam national enterprise registration website, it indicated the Apple Vietnam Limited Liability was established on 28 October. Its registered capital is about $672,000.

It locates in Ho chi minh city and specializes in the wholesaling and distributing of iPhone and other products. It provides information technology, maintenance and consulting service as well.

From 2009 to 2013, Vietnamese mobile users increased by 26% and obtained 124 million users. The latest data provided from Vietnamese Ministry of Information, its population was 90 million people two years ago. Over one third of the population have access to internet.

Vietnam is one of the hottest markets for selling Apple products. The revenue of first half year in its previous fiscal year doubled twice and the growth rate is 5 times quicker than Indian market.

Apple sets up branch in Vietnam would help to save some expenditures as the material and labor are comparatively cheaper there.

Samsung also invested billions of US dollars to set up plantation for manufacturing smartphones and electronics in Vietnam.

 

Groupon suffers deficit in third quarter and appoints new CEO

gjpg

US Groupon released its third quarter earnings till September 30, 2015 on Tuesday.

The report showed that Groupon’s revenue in the third quarter reached $713.6 million, while it achieved $714.3 million in the same period of last year. The net deficiency of common shareholders is $27.6 million, while it was $21.2 million in the same period of last year.

Groupon board of directors announced it appointed Rich Williams as its new CEO and director on Tuesday as well. The appointment took effective immediately.

Rich Williams took over the job from Groupon’s co founder Eric Leftkofsky who had worked as CEO since August,2013. Lefkofsky will hold a post of chairman of board of directors. Its current chairman Ted Leonsis will be appointed as lead independent director.

Groupon’s third quarter worldwild sales units increased by 1%, reaching 52 units. The sales units in north America increased by 11% in the third quarter, while the ones in Europe, Middle East and Africa increased by 1%. The global sales units declined 23% in comparison with the same period of last year.

Groupon’s global active volume of transaction in the third quarter was 570,000 times, while the one in North America was 290,000 times. Its global active consumers increased by 4% that quarter, reaching 48.6 million people.

The average transaction for each person was $ 132 in the past 12 month, while it was $ 137 in the same period of last year.

Groupon countered purchase 44,149,663 class A common shares in the third quarter, valuing $192.9 million. The integrated EBITDA will be valued between $40 million and $ 60 million, each share will profit between $-0.01 and $0.01.

 

Samsung will streamline 30% of its workforce, excluded China

samsung

Korea Times reported that Samsung will carry out the staff reduction plan to cut the expense by the end of this year. The involved departments are including financial department, human resource department and marketing department.

Samsung doesn’t officially response this news yet, but its Chinese branch confirmed that it has no plan to cut jobs here.

Korea Times reported the news confirmed by insiders, the top priority for Samsung is to cut its manufacturing expense. To those staffs who have ordinary performance, they are suggested to quit the job and get some compensations. To those over 50-year-old managers with ordinary performance and have difficulty to get promoted, the firm suggested they get retired voluntary.

Early in September, there were rumors that Samsung will cut jobs of about 10 thousands of employees. It was focus on Human Resource departments, Job Relation department and Financial department.

Samsung faces many challenges for its performance. It released new type of smartphones Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, but its marketing expense increased in the second quarter earnings due to the low of shipment quantity. Thus,the sales volume of Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge got affected. Samsung’s net profit number declined five quarters in a row before.

In its latest released third quarter earnings, Samsung’s revenue is 284.4 billion RMB, increasing by 8% compared to the same quarter last year. Its net profit amounts to 29.21 billion RMB. It was the first quarter that net profit realized increasing in the past two years.