Below, a pic I took a few weeks ago in Hauqiangbei, a commercial district in Shenzhen, China. It’s the beating heart of the global electronics industry, the world’s most important marketplace for everything electronic – phones, computers, playable piano keyboards that roll up like a crepe (~$15, I bought one), you name it. But what makes…
All posts in Business and Trade
More iPhone, More Carbon.
Earlier this week, when Apple announced that it was building a solar-powered data center in Mesa, Arizona, I immediately thought of their phones. To be sure, there’s much to admire in Apple’s commitment to reducing its internal carbon footprint. But that admiration needs to be tempered by an equally relevant set of facts: the carbon…
Bye-Bye, Best Buy (China): You had it coming. [UPDATED]
[23 Feb: Multiple updates to be found at the end of the post!] Late last week the Chinese media started reporting rumors that Best Buy, North America’s dominant electronics retailer, was planning to shut down its branded stores in China. Rumors like that don’t start from nothing – the company’s stores have been empty for…
Instant (Noodle) Inflation
How hot is inflation running in China? Fast enough that store clerks at my local convenience store don’t bother to replace the computer-generated price tags for instant noodles at a nearby convenience store. They just cross them out and write in the new (substantially higher) ones. Below, three impromptu price hikes on three well-known brands…
The aging face of what we think of when we think of Chinese labor.
Below, a photo of a metal sorter in Jiangsu Province, China. To those who don’t recognize what she’s doing, it may look like she’s sorting garbage. To those who do, they know that she’s a semi-skilled laborer who can distinguish different types of metal by sight and feel. That job description doesn’t generate much respect…
Cultural Revolution Chic, American Style
[UPDATE 12/3: Somehow I missed my friend Rob Schmitz’s excellent October 14 piece for NPR’s Marketplace regarding Gap’s entry into the China market. It touches on the question of localization, and whether or not Gap has made sufficient efforts to do so in China. It also touches on what happens when companies don’t localize in…
More on stolen iPhones at Best Buy Shanghai (Xujiahui): the Gangster Factor
Late last week I posted in regard to a bizarre encounter I had with a ‘freelance’ salesman/thief attempting to sell stolen iPhones inside of the Best Buy located in Shanghai’s Xujiahui neighborhood. In response, over the weekend I received several comments, two phone calls, and one email suggesting that the man who approached me is…
Get Your Used (stolen?) iPhones at Best Buy Shanghai (Xujiahui, 3rd floor)
Just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday shopping rush I come across evidence that at least one high-profile US-based entry into China’s cut-throat, price-sensitive retail market isn’t working out exactly as planned. I’m talking about Best Buy, North America’s largest electronics retailer. Three years ago they entered the Chinese market with plans to counter China’s…
End of Expo: A Small(er) Country Perspective
Was Expo 2010 worth it? Depends, I suppose, on who you are. If you’re from a small-town in China, and your only experience of Expo was had on a blazing hot August day when you had to stand in lines for hours with several hundred thousand of your closest friends to see a half-baked exhibit…
End of Expo: Malcolm Moore, Expo Critic, Is Undeterred
If one were to make a list of the most memorable essays, reviews, and reports written about Expo 2010 [Shanghai World’s Fair], Shanghai Expo: take a stroll down to Axis of Evil square, the cutting review of the event’s opening day by Malcolm Moore, the Daily Telegraph‘s Shanghai correspondent, would have to be placed near…