Apple's Revenue Source

Apple's Revenue Source.

Worst Parking Job Ever

The point of this video is to say BMW X5 is a real SUV with German horsepower under the hood...

联想的"乐phone"真的能乐起来吗?

说话难听点, 损一下联想的"乐phone"吧.

最近看到联想花大力气(就是花钱贝)给最新的乐phone做宣传, 满天的中文网都有相关报道. 联想信誓旦旦地要和iPhone挑战. 首先要说的是, 这一个竞争目标定得好 - 要比就比最好的. 勇气可加, 也有志气.

可是话说回来, "乐phone"实在是有点雷人. 外观设计有够丑, 这也就算了, 连软体平台都落后. 现在新出的ANDROID手机都用2.1了, "乐phone"还用1.6呢 (而且还没上市), 虽然以后会升级, 可是起步就落后了. 用ANDROID做平台, 并不是没有代价的. 软件的核心技术在谷歌手上, 也要服从开放平台的合同要求. 再谈"乐phone"这个名字.  就联想这么大的一个公司, 主打的产品竟然和对手的名字类似, 走出大门在国际市场上就有抄袭的嫌疑, 这不是天生就挂着"山寨"的味道吗, 走到哪里都一股土味, 没有创新.

好的宣传, 有的时候能把死的说成活的. 可是电子产品不能只靠呼悠. 苹果在6个月内在大中国市场卖了近两百万部iPhone, "乐phone"在六个月内如果能卖超过六十万只我就败服.

No More "The Next iPhone" Story, Please

I feel I've had enough of this "Gizmodo-got-the-next-iPhone" story.  Too much already!

I couldn't stop reading news from geek blogs, but there is so much news, redundant news, about the "next iPhone" and how the poor software engineer lost it and how he could also loose his career.  Gizmodo and media, please, stop.

Here is the problem, although I was one of the people who jumped into the link once I learned the next iPhone was leaked, the consequence is the exposure stole the show from Apple and Steve Jobs.  Apple fans will pay for this sentimentally later, I guarantee it.

Apple and their engineers are sometimes called "magicians".  They are good at controlling the release of their products air-tight.  You see, that is the beauty of this game.  They create the curiosity, they build the hype, then they release it with a bang during the Mac World events.  The speculation and secrecy form a big magnet that draw people's attentions (and stock prices, but I'm not a AAPL holder), The release of their product creates the "Wow" factor, on the day of the event, NOT before that.

Imagine yourself attending a circus/magic show.  If someone tells you what magic will be performed by the magicians and how exactly they would do the trick by revealing all the secrets in the magicians' toolbox right before the show, would you still have the same amount of enthusiasm and excitement when you watch it?  How about knowing the final score before watching a soccer or basketball game? I know I would not.

People in general agree that revealing magician's trick is un-ethical, so I would argue that Gizmodo's release of the new iPhone is also unethical (and perhaps even not legal).  For the least, they should have put a "Spoiler Alert" on the title.  But they won't, of course - It's all about money.  They paid five grands for it, so they need to get it back and make more money and create more publicity.  Indeed, they have achieved the goal.  The traffic at their server was so high that they had to shut down the comment feature to maintain accessability.  Gizmodo has done it...at the expense of stealing thunder from Steve Jobs in two months and the excitement from some Apple fanboys.

The highly speculated and anticipated Apple product-announcement was suppose to be the biggest bang in 2010.  If what Gizmodo claimed was NOT the next iPhone when Apple announce it (which I kind of wish at this moment, although the possibility is small), Giz will become a loser in this game.  However, if the phone is what it is intended to be, instead of saying "we got a new iPhone for you" by Jobs, he would have to say "we're ready to put the prototype you saw a couple of months ago into mass production".  You see, that's NOT Apple.  That's not their game, not in the tech world anyways.

So this is where I'm disappointed.  Yes, I chose to see what the next iPhone look like. Now I kinda wish I didn't make that choice.  I like to watch the show from Apple, from Jobs, without knowing what would be unwrapped during the show.  I wonder if someone else shares the same opinion as I do, or am I the only person in this world that wants to stop reading more news about the upcoming iPhone?

How many iPhone Apple Sold in China in Six Months - How about 2 Million?

Here is an interesting article reflecting the dynamic of the Chinese market (the same market that took over the U.S. as the No.1. market for the auto industry) - Apple's revenue in Greater China (that is, Mainland China + Hong Kong + Taiwan) for the 1st half of the fiscal year (six month period) was about $1.3 billion, according to Apple's own COO Cook.

At a retail price of ~$622 per unit, that's more than 2 million units of iPhone sold.

Given that China has about 1.3 billion people, even there is only a small fraction of rich people can afford a luxury consumer product like the iPhone, the number of total units sold is quite impressive.

Strange weather in Northern California this year

I thought the weather in Northern California would be nice and warm by this time of the year. 

Former Microsoft executive Tim Chen rumored to head Google's Greater China operation

DigiTimes reports that Microsoft's former CEO for Microsoft Greater China Region will get a new work badge at Google and lead Google's Great China operation (which became a controversial failure lately).

This is interesting because in July 2005, when Kai-Fu Lee, another former Microsoft Vice President left the company for Google, he was sued by Gates and Ballmer.  Will Microsoft sue Google and Tim Chen and repeat what they did a few years ago, or will Microsoft let Tim go rather quietly?