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Quoted – Icahn Scoops Up Apple Stock Post Product Launch Plummet

September 29, 2013 by 2 Comments
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Another short-term shock to Apple’s share price has been its inability to hammer out a deal for wider distribution of the iPhone in China.

“The No. 1 disappointment was there was no China Mobile deal, although I think that deal is coming,” business professor Scott Testa told MacNewsWorld.

The longer it takes for that deal to come, however, the more Apple’s share price may suffer.

5c No Cannibal

Wall Street was also disappointed with the price point for Apple’s developing world phone, the 5c, Testa noted. “It feels the handset business is a commoditized area that Apple should be super aggressive in and go after the low-end Android phones.”

http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/78952.html

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Apple Rolls Out Installment Payment Plan in China – Quoted – Forbes

January 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

Apple Rolls Out Installment Payment Plan in China

Scott Testa spent a good part of 2011 and 2012 visiting universities and high schools in Zhenghou, China on behalf of China Hope Project. His mission was to act as evangelist for U.S. education and technology.

In that role Testa couldn’t help but notice what type of mobile devices the students sported – invariably they would be handsets made by Asian manufacturers. Once in a blue moon, he tells me, he saw an iPhone. It’s not that students didn’t like Apple products, Testa says—they just couldn’t afford them.

(As a completely unrelated but very interesting side note, Zhenghou is also home to the Foxconn manufacturing facility that makes Apple iPhone 5 devices, a factory that experienced a lot of labor unrest in recent years. In other words, Zhenghou residents can make the devices but apparently can’t afford them).

“My experience was that Apple was viewed as a highly desired brand by Chinese students but it was out of reach for a lot of them,” Testa says.

Apple is trying to remedy that with a new installment payment plan it has introduced in China for buyers of iPhones and MacBook laptops, Bloomberg‘s BusinessWeek reports. It is offering such terms as $48 monthly payments spread out over two years in order to better compete with low-cost devices on the market.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2013/01/16/apple-rolls-out-installment-payment-plan-in-china/

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Quoted – Yuan expected to appreciate at snail’s pace

August 26, 2010 by 2 Comments
Assorted international currency notes.
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The appreciation of the yuan initiated in June by China’s central bank has raised concerns among investors, especially regarding the impact on China’s major exporters.

However, experts agree that the immediate impacts of yuan re-valuation will be minimal as the Chinese government is expected to realize the appreciation through a series of minor steps.

The general economic principle dictates that a stronger yuan will have negative impacts on China’s export-led companies. However, Scott Testa, a professor of business administration at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pa., said the controlled pace of the appreciation will mitigate such impacts on China’s exporters.

“I do think it [impact of yuan valuation] will be minimal because I think it will be gradual and will give the exporters time to adjust to the new currency environment,” he said. “If it was something that would happen dramatically, it would hurt them more.”

http://medillmoneymavens.com/2010/08/25/yuan-expected-to-appreciate-at-snail’s-pace/

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Quoted – China’s iron grip even extends to the Internet – Pioneer Press

November 18, 2009 by 2 Comments
This is why I love China.
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China is infamous for clamping down on dissent, not only physically — as it did in Tiananmen Square two decades ago — but also electronically.

“The Chinese have some of the strongest censorship in the world,” on the Internet as well as with print and television, said Scott Testa, a professor of business at Cabrini College in Philadelphia.

In the Information Age, stemming the flow of information isn’t easy.

President Barack Obama, visiting China this week, has called for Internet freedom in China as a human rights issue. Obama told Shanghai students Monday that information should be free.

According to the Washington Post, Obama was asked in a town-hall style meeting what he thought about the Chinese government blocking several Internet international sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and critical news sites. “I’ve always been a strong supporter of open Internet use,” Obama said.

In response, Chinese officials Tuesday defended their policies as protective to national interests.

China’s online content-control strategy is a massive monitoring operation to spot forbidden content inside the country’s borders as well such information coming from outside sources.

While it’s often called the “Great Firewall of China” — as if to suggest a massive electronic barrier that repels online speech — the reality is a bit more nuanced, experts say.

http://www.twincities.com/ci_13811823

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Why Buy “Made in China”?

July 19, 2009 by 1 Comment
AMERICAN COMPANY! DESIGNED IN USA! made in chi...
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I just recently read an article on MSNBC about the latest defective product made in China – drywall. According to the Associated Press, “the Centers for Disease Control says prolonged exposure to the compounds found in the drywall, especially high levels of carbon disulfide, can cause breathing problems, chest pains and even death; and can affect the nervous system.” Ok, I’m scared – are you scared? So why is it that we keep importing products from China on a regular basis as if they’re working with a pristine track record? What marketing ploy is responsible for US citizens buying from China even though China has been known to sell defective merchandise.. Besides the defective dryway, there are many other notable representative “Made in China” products of the same defective caliber: tainted baby formula, lead based toys, melamine tainted candies, and sub par prescription drugs.

I seriously had a thought wave trying to understand why Americans still import twice as much product from China as we export. I can’t recall ever seeing anything marketed specifically as a product of China. The fact that products made in China are not under one big “Made in China” brand may contribute to Americans disassociation between all “Made in China” products and China’s highly publicized flawed products. Yet, the tie that does binds all of the “Made in China” products together is the word cheap: cheap labor, cheap materials, thus cheap prices.

So why is it that we keep importing products from China on a regular basis? It’s obviously the price. I can’t say any of the other 3 marketing mixes (Product, Place and Promotion) are a factor. The country’s reputation is surely shot to hell and therefore can’t be used to lure buyers. Seriously, what would a promotional ad for a “Made in China” product say: “Buy From China – We Sell Defective Products”? Obviously, the fact that many products are made under different brands belies buyers inability to connect “cheap” to “defective”, thereby allowing lower pricing to keep Chinese imports on American shelves.

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