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Providing an insight for the auto industry and other industries, Nokia has managed its own downturn from a few years ago. Nokia has taken a strong position in emerging markets without letting profit margins sink and keeping the average price of a Nokia cellphone from dropping much. See the groups and links to Motorola's situation. Continued dominance in India and China helped Nokia achieve mobile phone shipments growth of 27%in 2007 over 2006 to reach 133.5 million units. Nokia is also gaining market share increasing it to 40% in the 4th quarter 2007 from 39% in the 3rd quarter. And Nokia is now poised to gain back the market share it lost in the USA in the last few years. It sees the market for mobile phones growing by 10% a year wordwide with strong growth in Asia balancing slower growth in developed countries. Nokia follows the average selling price of mobile phones which suggest the direction the market is taking in price and higher end lower end sales distribution, especially at a time when Nokia competes in price sensitive Asian markets with higher lower end sales distribution. Here the average selling price of Nokia phones dropped from euro 89 in the fourth quarter 2006 to euro 83 in 4th quarter 2007. Nokia is careful to keep introducing new feature laden phones that customers want to keep this average price up. In the 4th quarter 2007 the average price was up from euro 82 in the 3rd quarter to euro 83. Nokia's operating margins in the mobile phone business reflect a surprising result, actually increasing from 17.8% to 25% even as average price is dropping from euro 89 to euro 83? How was this achieved? Some of this is probably from better manufacturing in better locations without compromising quality, moving factories to eastern europe and other places. Nokia plans to close a factory in Germany with 2300 workers and move this to Romania by mid-2008. The increased sale of higher margin multi media phones also helped. Another aspect of Nokia's approach- grasping the fact that extremely high sales were needed to do well in in the lower end of the market at the euro 30 price level. This means that competing in India and China with the high sales volume helps it stay ahead in this lower end. These markets are also interesting in another way, they are fast changing markets with a lot of things happening. Because they are price sensitive there is a lot of competition including from lower end makers in China. Asian markets also have young users who have different usage, lifestyle and trends and Nokia can learn a lot on how to stay abreast of these demographics and other changes. And competing at this level helps you develop the manufacturing knowhow to bring down the cost of the higher end phones with more features. There are crisscross benefits to competing at every price range in different demographics and in different regions, and continually learning and building the people and structures to compete effectively. . Nokia's successful strategies in 2008. ...

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The new iPad coming out in March 2012 will be priced at $499, with the prior version being priced now at $399. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, says the iPad sales in the 4th quarter of 2011 surpassed sales of PC's by any individual manufacturer. To give some idea of the impact Apple's sales of $9.5 billion for iPads in the 4th quarter were twice the sales revenue made by Microsoft for Windows software and close to the total revenue of Google during the quarter. This third generation iPad looks like the previous one. It has an A5X quad-core chip for faster processing and a higher resolution screen with 2,048 by 1,536 pixels. The new iPad also works on the new cellphone network technology called LTE. It works on AT&T and Verizon's networks. Users can dictate e-mail on this device.

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The shortage of labor will make the transition to a workweek of less than 60 hours for existing factory workers in China difficult, say experts. The transition to better working hours will take some time to be implemented as required by China's new labor laws and public pressure in the U.S. and China.

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Apple's effort to reverse a loss of market share to Android smartphones at the lower end of the price range.

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The FBI's mistake of changing the password of the San Bernardino terrorist's iphone resulted in locking up the data.

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Third quarter 2014 profit for Samsung was less than half of the profit for the prior year quarter. Profit was down 62% from the prior year. Chinese competitors seriously dented Samsung profits in mobile phones where Samsung made about 60% of its profits.

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Steve Jobs anticipated a post PC period when he told a technology conference in 2010 that PC's would retain a lot of their value, but he said they will be used only by one out of so many users. Tim Cook told a Goldman Sachs investor conference recently: "From the first day it shipped, we thought- not just me, many of us thought at Apple- that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market, and it was just a matter of time that it took for that to occur." Analysts see this happening sometime between 2013 and 2017.

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Apple's sales in India are insignificant because of the lack of 3G networks. RIM's Blackberry and apps work well on the existing 2G networks. Prices are higher with the cheapest iPhone costing $705 at a Reliance iStore. The cheapest iPad 2 goes for $603. Blackberry phones cost less than $200. As a result Apple's iPhone sales are only 2.6% of India's smartphone shipments for the 2nd quarter 2011. RIM's is 15%, Samsung Electronic's is 21%, and Nokia's 46%, according to IDC. RIM is extending its distribution in India from 15 cities in 2010 to 80 cities in 2011. IDC estimates that smartphone shipments in India will grow by 68% a year, reaching 81.5 million units by 2015.

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Nokia's failure to build the smartphone before Apple and other competitors. This comes after investment in R&D by Nokia exceeded that of Apple and Google in the last decade. The focus was on pure R&D as opposed to building products using new technologies and staying ahead of the curve.

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The use of fast track procedures under 510 K, for approval of Ren-Gen's Menaflex product to treat knee injuries. Under 510K rules for fast track no clinical trials are required, because the product is similiar to already existing products. Menaflex does not have asimiliar product, yet the FDA allowed Menaflex to be treated as fast track. The closest is orthopedic surgical operation, which is quite different. Menaflex is a C shaped pad used to repair a torn meniscus, a rubbery substance made from cow collagen that that acts like ashock absorber between the knee bones. Their is a booming market for meniscus repair among sports athletes. In fact originally Ren-Gen did not even apply as fast track, but only afte its clinical trials ran into trouble, did it try for fast track, which was turned down several times. At which point Ren-Gen got Democrats Senator Robert Menendez, Rep Frank Pallone, Chairman of the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep Rothman of Hackensack where Ren-Gen is based, and Senator Frank Lautenberg to intervene. At this point Senator Menendez and the others wrote to the FDA Commisssioner Dr Von Eschenbach, and Menendez spoke to the Commisssioner personally on the phone. After this intervention things started moving in Ren-Gen's dirtection, bypassing the FDA staffers who had reservations, and a special panel was appointed that again excluded anyone that had reservations, in an unusual procedure, which approved Menaflex. Now Congress and the Obama administration are being asked to review the whole process the FDA uses for medical devices because of the controversy this has caused about what is seen as unfair influence of companies in FDA approval process. Menaflex say those who had reservatoions faces alot of pounding and wear and tear between the knee bones and its safety and effectiveness needs to be proven before approval. It has been approved in Europe for afew years, but only 2800 patients have used it in Europe, only a small proportion of patients, and not enough is known about its effectiveness and any issues. ...