Apple and Emerging Markets

Chinese carriers aren't so interested in paying handset subsidies, so they're going with cheaper phones. Srry iPhone, you'll have to continue focusing on upselling The Next Big Thing to the domestic market:


For instance China Unicom’s EBITDA margins for its mobile division have declined sharply in recent years from 42% in 2008 to about 24% expected by the end of 2011, mainly due to high level of subsidies associated with higher priced smartphones. By selling cheaper smartphones, these companies will be able to reduce their subsidy costs while keeping data usage and consequently ARPU levels intact.

And if you always mis-read that carrier's name as China Unicorn, well, you and I would probably get along.


Linky

NBA All-Star...

...E-Waste Recycling. Bet you didn't see that coming.

What the Klout

Tweeting during your performance review to keep your Klout score up is very important if you want to continue receiving free water.



Working as an internet marketing/social media "professional" is a little interesting. At some point, as more and more internet services start to require you to login with Facebook, etc, the lines between your "personal brand" and your employer's brand start to get muddled. Which is not a good thing if they don't mesh. And, I guess, it also runs the risk of disrupting your flow of free water if you have to spend all your time tweeting for them instead.

Relevancy, we hardly knew ye

Oh hey, look, an ad for granola bars with a piece of fruit wearing dollar sign bling.

It did inspire me to write a little verse:

Yo don't you mess with my payola
Or my big bar of granola
Cuz I might hafta wreck your face
With a green Crayola

The ad:

OMG HAX

Wondering where all that Facebook spam comes from? "600,000 compromised Facebook sign-ons per day"

http://news.consumerreports.org/electronics/2011/10/report-600000-facebook-log-ins-compromised-per-day.html

On Consumer Habits

We live in a world where the best-selling Amazon.com item for the tabletop is a mug shaped like a toilet, and #2 is brass knuckles. No fine china, no cake plates, no sustainably forested wooden hewn cheese plates for us, folks.

Toilet mug. Betcha thought that was niche. Guess not.

Brand Extensions

They don't always make sense, you know, and social media isn't always the right place to flaunt them.