English | Deutsch English | Deutsch最近我的朋友想换一只有超大屏幕、操作简单、可以拍照、听音乐、上网方便的手机，而且还要设计时尚有点个性，不要黑莓的商务外形和价格，想了一秒钟，我说，还是买iPhone吧。虽然iPhone尚未启动在中国的销售计划，但是根据In-stat的今年两月份的一篇报道，中国移动在2007年底网内被破解的iPhone已有40万只左右，这个数字相当于苹果去年iPhone销售量的十分之一。虽然不知道中国移动是如何得到这个数据，但我对数字本身一点也不感到惊讶，因为淘宝上和电脑城里到处都有销售iPhone并提供破解服务的卖家，而身边也有不少朋友都用着这个酷酷的黑家伙，甚至我上周去香港迪士尼乐园是都遇到不少内地游客拿着iPhone拍照留影。
iPhone什么时候能开始官方在中国的销售？虽然数月前中国移动和苹果就此的谈判宣布告吹，我们还是保持积极乐观的态度，期待今年可以看到真正的苹果体验店和官方销售的iPhone。不过如果苹果还是坚持与AT&T一样的合作模式要求中国的运营商分享超过两成的使用收益，我们就必须更加耐心一点了。如果苹果可以务实一点，咬咬牙接受单卖手机的盈利模式，外加一点自己在行的服务收费创新，也许能够迅速占领市场，并且弥补没有运营收益的遗憾。因为苹果每晚来中国市场一天，其未来利润就在一点点地被诸多零售渠道和蜂拥而至的copycats通过各种手段所侵蚀。而且更糟糕的是，如果苹果不推出更“苹果”的使用界面和外观设计，人们很快就会厌倦和别人拿着一样的方块盒子打电话，而手机市场上向来不乏日新月异的技术和设计创新。
China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA standard was officially launched last month. But it is only a trial, as no license is yet granted. The trial covers 8 Chinese cities and involves some 20,000 people. There are already speculations that it might last up to 2 years, but it might be utilized by the Olympics Organizing Committee come August. In the meantime, the telecoms industry looks set to go through a major restructuring, with the breaking up of China Unicom, China’s second largest mobile operator with one-third of the mobile subscribers. China Telecom and China Netcom will get a mobile standard each from China Unicom, which currently has both the GSM and CDMA standards. The restructuring will yield 3 telecom operators, …
Kung Fu is unique to China and is an export that is increasingly successful and diverse. You are probably familiar with Bruce Lee, Jacky Chan and Jet Li but the business of Kung Fu is not limited to the movies. Nintendo games like Street Fighter have characters which are based on particular Chinese martial arts and PC games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms is not only popular in China, but in Korea and Japan as well. Wuxia novels, or literally meaning “martial (arts) heroes”, especially by Jing Yong have been read by generations of Chinese everywhere, and turned into TV series countless times. Not to mention the comic book genre, which has also been turned into movies by …
These seem to be apocalyptic times for designers. If you happen to be a member of this threatened species, you better look for another calling. We had just put Pillippe Starck’s “Design is dead” fatalism to bed, and then I read Peter Merholz’s essay from 2007: “Stop designing products!”
The 1972 New York subway map is back! Massimo Vignelli, the man behind this graphic design classic, was asked by to update his legendary map for the magazine’s May issue, reflecting more than 30 years’ worth of changes.
In the past two weeks, I had the opportunity to attend two very interesting conferences. The first one was Fortune’s Brainstorm Green, followed by the Milken Institute’s Global Conference. Both of these conferences attract the who’s who in the financial and business world. What struck me at both events was the rallying cry that innovation is key in solving many of the world’s problems. I continued to hear that change is needed for people to think and behave differently.
The Fortune conference featured the usual suspects who have championed the environment long before it became a cause célèbre. One surprise twist was the number of investors in attendance. I met more financiers who had funds to invest …
Fifteen years ago yesterday, the World Wide Web became official and was put into the public domain. In honor of that fact, one of our colleagues at frog (thanks Ben Tomassetti!) brought in a birthday cake for it today:
(Thanks to Cary Gibaldi for the photo)
Note the nerd humor of the binary numbering for the year (there are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don’t…) I can’t say that it actually was the “moistest cake I’ve ever tasted”, but, like the web, it was free, so I’m not going to complain.
This blog post at SiliconValley.com from yesterday sums up the situation nicely:
It could easily have gone …
There is an interesting article in the April 2008 Harvard Business Review about how to be a successful services company, and one of the examples they talk about is Progressive Insurance. They talk about the two features of Progressive which are most distinctive and visible - their white vans, and how they list competitor’s rates alongside their own. As the article describes:
When someone insured by Progressive is involved in an auto accident, the company immediately sends out a van to assist that person and to assess the damage on the spot… Customers love this level of responsiveness and give the company high marks for service.
But customers are very price sensitive about auto insurance and so would …
Reading an article last week in the New York Times about finding out your life expectancy encouraged me to, of course, take the test. I love online tests, and this one purported to be backed by a lot of research, which is right up my alley.
The questions on the test made me realize that in addition to green and sustainability efforts that I could be better at, eating better and relaxing more activities I could be doing better at as well. One question almost begs for me to eat nuts by asking do I At Least Eat One Serving of Nuts Per Week? Sadly, none. What about whole grains? Nope. …
I came across another example of meta-marketing today — the phenomenon of PR becoming the actual story. The Wall Street Journal reports on the Brew Blog launched by Miller Brewing Co. It’s about beer, yes, but instead of promoting Miller’s products, the corporate blog focuses exclusively on every step of arch rival Anheuser-Busch.
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