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Blue Chip

iPhone? What’s an iPhone?

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The iPhone isn’t very popular… in China and India. The lack of interest in the iPhone is somewhat disappointing to the tech giant because those are the two hottest growth spots for smartphones. People in developed markets already have smartphones – so those customers are basically tapped out (except for the upgrades). So why don’t iPhones sell like crack in other countries like they do in North America?

 

The Chinese are innovative… and apparently, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi own 80% of the market. In fact, Huawei is the world’s second leading smartphone brand (call me crazy, but I’ve never heard of them). If innovation from Chinese brands is killing the iPhone, maybe we should give those same phones a try in America? Just name it something we can pronounce…

 

India can’t afford it… and 800 million people in the country have yet to use the internet. There is no “official” order on how this should go, but I believe it should go: internet then smartphone…in that order. Not to mention increased tariffs make the iPhone X cost $1,700 in India – something most developed markets wouldn’t pay. And Indians prefer Samsung and Xiaomi, anyway. It looks like Apple can’t win ‘em all…

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Blue Chip

In a world without two-day shipping…….

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The ‘Amazon of China’ as we like to call it… is joining forces with Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, telecom company MegaFon, and internet company Mail.Ru Group. Alibaba plans to pay an unspecified amount of money and give ownership of its existing business, AliExpress Russia to gain access to Russia.

 

Russia and China are… teaming up in business and politics to help counteract sanctions from Europe and the United States. Also, Alibaba will help facilitate online shopping growth across Russia – something the country could really use. Seems like a win-win, right?

 

If the deal goes through… Alibaba will keep 48% of AliExpress Russia, MegaFon will own 24%, and the rest will be divvied up in smaller amounts. And there is no better country to be an e-commerce company in than Russia. Why you ask? Because only 20% of the country shops online which means there are plenty of customers to be had. Online sales came in at $24 billion in 2015, which may sound like a lot – but it’s really not. Hopefully the new ‘Russian online shopping craze’ will give the trolls something else to do.

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Start-up

You probably didn’t lose this much on bitcoin

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Cryptocurrency has lost $400 billion… and this figure includes Sean Russell’s life savings. Russell invested $120,000 in bitcoin last November…and if you know anything about bitcoin, you would know that number magically grew. Scratch that – that number exploded to $500,000 in a month.

 

The highs and lows… bitcoin was once trading over $20,000 per unit; now it goes for around $6,300. Russell has lost 96% of his life savings, after initially quadrupling it. Yes, the once-promising returns of bitcoin seem to be gone for good. But how does something like this even happen?

 

It happens because… people have no clue what they’re doing. People that wouldn’t normally invest, like college students (no offense if you are one), started buying into the bitcoin frenzy and jacking the price up far beyond what it should have been. You know, like a bubble – and that bubble isn’t done bursting because, last week, bitcoin dropped another 20% in two days…just for good measure.

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International

‘Tencent’ will soon live up to their name if this keeps up

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Tencent is deciding to fold… on its popular online poker game “Texas Everyday Hold’em” which had over 1 billion users. The loss looks to be yet another setback for a company whose stock is down 35% since the start of 2018. Now, 35% is a lot for any company, but to Tencent that represents $200 billion in market value – that’s a lot a lot (sorry for the really technical term there).

 

The significant loss in market value… comes from strict regulations imposed by the Chinese government. Gambling (and all fun?) is illegal in China, but the gaming company got around that by having users play with virtual tokens. That was all well and good until users started trading tokens for cash which caused the Chinese government to take a closer look at the gaming company.

 

Other problems for Tencent include… not being able to make money – there you go, that is an all-encompassing reason. Tencent needs the approval to make money on their new mobile games, such as the popular “PlayersUnknown’s Battlegrounds.” There is also talk about Beijing limiting online gaming and restricting the amount of time kids can play on their devices. Sounds like a fun time to do business in China, no?

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