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 …
From Mickey Mouse to McDonald’s to Madonna to Prison Break, the US leads in the industry of culture exports. Meanwhile to most people, China is about Ang Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi. Its scope is narrow (movies) and China definitely still some way to go before it can match the US in terms of revenue (over 11 percent of U.S. GDP comes from the creative industries). China is rich in history and cultures, yet not packaged in a way that is really marketable globally. This is the first of a series of observations which try to uncover what China is already exporting and other potential exports.
The Chinese music scene is filled with lots of stars, but …
Trying to understand the Chinese market? Understanding the philosophy of Confucius might be a good place to start. The study of Confucianism is the study of the Chinese culture, it is not a religion. Confucius presents himself as a “transmitter who invented nothing”, formulating his philosophies on observation, primarily on the Shandong province, which is known as the most traditional province till now. His is a philosophy based on benevolence and humanity (仁, pronounced ren) and emphasizing morality, social relationships, justice and sincerity.
Confucius lived more than 2500 years ago, but his observations still hold true today. In his book - Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer, by JWT’s Tom Doctoroff, he talks about understanding the Confucian …
Last week I ordered an Inspiron notebook on the Dell China site. It took me only 30 minutes to study those specifications and made the choice to order online. It saved me a lot of time to look around the cybermart feeling lost and frustrated. What’s more, it offered a good discount. Seven days later I recieved the machine without surprise because Dell had sent me tracking emails to report the delivery progress. On the next day, I received an automatically-sent email to instruct me how to run the applications and a call to survey my purchase experience and satisfaction from a customer service representative.
I’m not alone. An increasing number of Chinese customers feel comfortable shopping online and expect to …
How time flies! It’s been a year since frog came to China. We celebrated this exciting moment with a susccessful premiere Design Mind Speaker Series in Shanghai last Friday. The event topic was Global Fusion, which stimulated a lot of discussions around merging various trends and cultures into China as one of the most fast growing economies in the world.
The party never ends. Here we open a brand new platform to keep sharing frog Shanghai’s extensive insights in this market. As you may notice under the blog name on the top, it seems that we’ll become the frog blog with the most writers. DONG XI (东西), as our blog name, is the pinyin of two Chinese characters …
Firstly, a self-plug. Check out my recent article published in this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review. Entitled “Innovate Faster by Melding Design and Strategy,” the article touches on some of the themes I’ve discussed in this space — bringing together traditional business strategy approaches (options identification, business cases, roadmaps) with design (user research, ideation, prototyping) to ensure decision-making and innovation happen quickly and agilely.
The article itself is not focused on China, but as I mentioned in a previous frogblog post, many of the same principles are particularly relevant to innovation in China.
Interestingly, this same issue of HBR does have an excellent article about China — “The Battle for China’s Good-Enough Market” (only page 1 of 6 …
For those of you who try to follow the evolution of consultancies and their differentiating philosophies, this post’s for you. We at frog design for a while have been calling ourselves a strategic-creative consultancy. This reflects our belief that it’s not just about great design. While we have the talent and methodologies to create great design based on user insights, needs, and behaviors, for us and our clients to be truly successful we need to see what we’ve created achieve wins in the market. That means taking a concept through development and seeing it launched, distributed, marketed, serviced, and fully operationalized.
I previously blogged about Dell’s EC280 cheap desktop PC designed for the China mass market. To Dell’s credit, they …
Back from a long break — I hope to be back on a regular posting schedule now…
There’s a great article from Fortune magazine about how Microsoft has finally achieved success in China, after 15 years of attempts and mis-steps and billions of dollars in lost revenue. The article positions Microsoft’s eventual success as a case example of learning how to operate in a different foreign business climate. It required close collaboration with the government, investment in local R&D centers, new pricing models based on acceptance of piracy, new training programs, and many other new business initiatives.
Another way to look at Microsoft’s success is from the perspective of business model innovation: Microsoft in China was much more than a typical …
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