Apple and its followers in China

Apple topples market estimates. So does its followers in China.

In China, MP3 industry has always been in a mess. Since the launch of first iPod, MP3 became popular in China, too. Hundreds of factories started to produce MP3. After all these years, iPod is becoming more and more popular, but the China MP3 industry is still full of small factories, no big brand. Among them, now, there are two manufacturers are doing good jobs. They are Meizu and Oppo.

Especially Meizu, follows Apple very close. At the beginning, Meizu copied iPod appearance, at the same time, only 1/3 or half of the price of iPod. But now, Meizu is still following Apple, though, is doing a better and better job. The quality is better, the launch time is shorter, and now they began to add some more human oriented functions, which is better than iPod! At the same time, the price is still half of the price of Apple.

When I found there is almost only Apple iPod as the MP3 player in US, I was astonished. It is unbelievable. In the biggest market, there is only one brand in the market. Yes, iPod is good, but I like to have more choices. In China, there are dozens of brands in the market, with different prices and choices!

I hope the followers in China will sometime equal Apple.

Timber Industry

In China, the timber industry is one of the few industries in which the state owned companies are not the main players. Almost all of the players are private companies. And none of them are big players.

This is a good chance for anyone who wants to enter this market.

Now the biggest timber import port in China is Zhangjiagang, which is near to Shanghai, and 100 kilometers around Zhangjiaguang, there are hundreds of timber companies. But the most advanced furniture factories are located in Peal Delta, which began to develop ten years earlier than those in Yangtzi River Delta.

Baidu goes for C2C

Baidu announces to do the C2C business. Since Alibaba has launched Taobao for C2C and defeated Ebay China. Now Taobao is the biggest C2C website in China.

The second and third C2C website is Eachnet, which was Ebay China, and Paipai, which is owned by Tencent. Now, Baidu comes in.

Baidu is the first in search engine in China, but I doubt on its power in electrical business.