Archive for November, 2015

Facebook released a brief application Facebook Lite this summer. It was made for the low-end handsets. Its style was similar to Facebook mobile website applied from 2009 to 2010.

You might be surprised that it only used 4 months to obtain 50 million users, however, Facebook Lite seldom becomes a topic for discussion. Facebook Lite was not well-acknowledged by this industry until Mark Zuckerberg made speech at the teleconference of its third quarter earnings.

Facebook introduced Facebook Lite worldwide in June. This app was one of the main reasons for Facebook users growth in the third quarter. Facebook adjusted the definition of active users and canceled the active users who log in via the third party apps. This figure impressed the publich much.

Facebook Lite helps those users to use Facebook who have limited data plan or trouble with 2G internet connection. They were unable to browse Facebook website previously. Facebook Lite is a stepping-stone to success for Facebook introduces Internet.org.

It helps the users to enhance the data performance that they bought. It allows users to use the Facebook service on the basis of the data plan they use.

The shortcoming for Facebook Lite is that i could only upload low-resolution images or save small capacity data. If the Facebook Lite users wish to view clear resolution images, they need to process them before uploading. What’s more, Facebook Lite doesn’t support the view of video and video ads.

The positive influence of Facebook Lite can be seen in South Asia region and other developing regions in the world. It helps Facebook to obtain more 47 million users. The emerging market accepts Facebook Lite. The public believes that it could make more profits from those regions with the improvement of network facility.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.