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German automobile companies have made some bad bets on China sales. Sales in China have collapsed for Porsche as Chinese are buying local Chinese products and local Chinese autos are competitive. NYT reports on Porsche and the bad bet on China sales, then as tariffs hit serious problems.

Oliver Blume Porsche CEO says-

"Our market in China has literally collapsed. U.S. import tariffs are weighing on our business.”

“We already faced massive headwinds last year — now we are experiencing a violent storm."

Audi, Mercedes and BMW have been caught in a storm by making most of their US sold cars in Germany. The warnings from the first DJT term were ignores as they were by Apple in the US which continued to make in China. These companies are now facing problems of acting within a short time to take action to build in America to avoid tariffs.

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Spotify raises $1 billion from venture capital firms in March 2016. It gives the VC firms a 20% discount in a IPO offering for the shares in 1 year, and adding 2.5% every 6 months till an IPO. Spotify is losing money and plans an IPO in 2 years. It faces competition from Apple Music streaming service. Private equity firm TPG, Dragoneer Investment Group, and clients of Goldman Sachs participated in the deal. Tech firms are increasingly using convertible debt rather than equity. Spotify also pays annual interest of 5% which is added to the debt, and this increases by 1 percentage point every 6 months till it reaches 10%. Fidelity Investments has marked down its Spotify stake, down 27% for Spotify shares since August 2015.

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Huawei is No. 1 in China and No.3 in Europe in smartphones. For the second quarter of 2018 its smartphone sales surpassed Apple to make it No.2 in the world. Its market share is 13.9% of the world market for the last 12 months, the same as Apple. Huawei was close to making a deal with AT&T to sell smartphones in the U.S. but has run into problems with U.S. regulators. The Justice Department is investigating whether Huawei violated U.S. sanctions on Iran, and the Defense Department is removing Huawei phones and gear from U.S. bases. Most of Huawei's sales gains come from Samsung and other vendors of the Android system smartphones.

The main difference is price Apple phones average cost is $848, Huawei is at $269. 

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Starting in 2009 Samsung's investment in R&D exceeded the same investment by competitors Sony and Panasonic. By 2011 this gap had widened, as Samsung spent $8.7 billion on R&D in 2011, Panasonic $6.6 billion and Sony $5.5 billion for their fiscal years. This is a result of Samsung's having captured a larger portion of the market and profits in recent years. In the U.S. Samsung has 50% of the market for LCD television sets. Now Sony and Panasonic have reached an agreement to join together their efforts for production technologies to produce OLED television sets, the next generation technology for television. Sony and Panasonic are also working on changing their mindset that focussed on technological advancement and less on delivering consumer friendly technology at attractive price points. Sony developed the first e-reader in 2004, and developed the first OLED set in 2007. But the e-reader lacked the software capabilities of the e-readers developed later by Amazon and Apple. For OLED the production technology was lacking for Sony to produce it at commercially viable prices for mass production. Now Sony prefers to let S. Korean competitors take the lead, and hopes to come from behind by combining critical areas of technological development with Panasonic. Samsung and LG Electronics will bring new 55 inch OLED sets to the market in late 2012. Panasonic and Sony have new CEO's who are faced with developing strategies for a rebound. Panasonic CEO, Kazuhiro Tsuga, is keen on changing the mindset of the company back to the consumer. He told a news conference recently: "Japanese firms are too confident about our technology and manufacturing prowess. We lost sight of the products from the consumer's point of view."...

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Jack Tramiel set of the computer revolution since 1977 with his Commodore personal computers targeted at lower price points than the competition. This included the Apple II which was outsold by the Commodore PC's in the early 1980's. He described this as going for "the masses, not the classes." He was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who made his way to the U.S. in 1947, launched a typewriter business, then a calculator business in Toronto, and thereafter moved to Palo Alto, California. A visit to Japan in the 1960's resulted in him launching a calculator business. An acquisition of a chip supplier brought him into contact with one of the employees who had developed a new microprocessor. This led to the beginnings of the Commodore line of PC's.

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The smartphone market in Brazil is shifting to the $100-$300 range. Because of higher import taxes and other costs, including paying for the full price upfront, buyers pay about $260 for a Moto G whereas a iPhone 6 would cost $1060. The focus is on the better value for the Moto G compared to the Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone in developing countries, where new middle class consumers such as in Brazil may make between $5400 to $27,000 a year. This creates opportunities for such phones with superior value- the Moto G has a 5 inch HD display, a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm pocessor, and an 8 megapixel camera. This has helped Lenovo Motorola Mobility take 18% of the Brazil smartphone market, according to IDC, making the Moto G the best selling smartphone in Brazil.

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The rapid spread of emoji chracters originating from Japan in our daily text conversations. This is bringing emotional state into daily conversations with a simple click on a smartphone. Shigetaka Kurita a designer for Docomo in Japan noticed the use of a picture of the sun in Japan for sunny weather not the use of words as in the U.S., and the use of a bulb over a head for someone with a smart idea, hearts common in Japan for affection, and this led him to the idea of creating a whole set of characters for different moods and emotional states to use in mobile conversation. Apple was the first to adopt them on its smartphones after the emoji were already popular in Japan for about 10 years.

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As thrift is now an important habit for customers, a number of low cost items is what retailers are hoping to sell this holiday season, instead of a blockbuster gadget. Best Buy's executive in charge of looking at customers mindsets says frugality trend is the overriding sentiment and getting value for money is uppermost in the mind. The other factor in this years electronics is that they offer incremental technology and not the Nintendo Wii videogame console or Apple iPhone product that created a lot of buzz. Also most cosumers already have one of these products. An exception is the electornic book reader. And Best Buy is offering competitors to the Kindle by Amazon, for $200-$400, and launching new store sections to let buyer try them out.

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Nokia slips into seventh place in the smartphone market in Nov. 2012, as Apple and Samsung take the lead with combined 46.5% market share, and HTC, RIM overtake Nokia. Nokia has only 4.3% of the smartphone sales worldwide. Smartphones now account for about 40% of all mobile phone sales worldwide according to Gartner Inc., and sales are growing fast with a 47% increase in global smartphone sales in the third quarter according to Gartner Inc. Worldwide 169.2 million smartphones were sold in the third quarter of 2012. Microsoft operating system and Nokia's Symbian system account for only 5% of the operating systems on smartphones in the third quarter 2012, says Gartner. By comparison Google's open end Android platform accounts for 72.4% of smartphones, increasing from 52.5% the prior year.

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In a major policy move India's Modi government makes major changes for foreign investment in India. In different sectors, pharmaceuticals, defense, civil aviation, and retail stores, the move is designed to attract investment and create new jobs. Foreign investors can now take 100 percent ownership in defense, civil aviation, and food products sectors with government approval. In pharmaceuticals foreign investors can take upto 74 percent ownership with no government approval needed. In retail stores, such as for Apple and Ikea, the rules offer new incentives. From now on the requirement that Apple and other companies buy 30% of their supplies locally for single brand retail stores will be relaxed with a 3 year exemption on local sourcing, which can be extended to 5 years if the products sold are "state of the art" and "cutting edge technology," according to a government announcement. The changes were made by executive order. Apple CEO Tim Cook visited India and lobbied for this change recently. In combination with a national GST goods and services tax to be passed in July 2016, which is to be instituted nationally to replace a old set of state by state requirements and taxes, the two changes could have a bigger impact than the 1991 reforms that moved India away from a socialist managed economy. Poor job report numbers may have increased the pressure for taking action. In the defense sector the earlier change to allow 49% ownership had resulted in few new proposals. The changes in foreign investment rules also follows the resignation of the head of the central bank, Raghuram Rajan. ...

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Samsung, and HP have tablets competing with the Apple iPad. RIM also plans to release its version of the iPad. Competing iPads are smaller 7 inch versions. Steve Jobs of Apple says, the smaller iPads are not great for many applications.

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The UK introduces a new points based immigration system similiar to one used in Australia, which grades workers and students hoping to enter the UK on criteria such as education, age, and need for their skills. Anyone entering the UK on a visa will n ow be fingerprinted, and foreign nationals living in the UK are now required to apply for ID cards they are expected to carry.

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Surges in capital value can be wildly misleading. Nvidia a rapid computing company propelled in stock value. From the growth of crypto currency that led to losses and was perceived as a danger to the financial system by central banks and governments. This is happening when capital investment is a dire need in education and schools, good teachers and good classrooms, when only a third of American students pass NAEP tests on reading comprehension. Today's capital allocation system was never designed to accomplish this even as it sends hundreds of billions of dollars in one single day to a single company. Nvidia is now seeing a surge from chatbots computing coming out of ChatGPT,  leading to $184 billion change in its market value on May 25, 2023.  Nvidia was mostly a graphics processing company setup to make graphics on PC's look better. In 2006 Jensen Huang made the decision to open it up to developers to tinker with it and develop more computing capabilities. This has led to Nvidia designing much more powerful computing chips that perform thousands of calculations at the same time.   Nvidia designs the chips and sends production out to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. Suddenly Nvidia sees its share price surge and it joins companies such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Tesla that have seen one day surge in the value of the companies by over $100 billion shown in this WSJ graph by date. Huang says he thinks that this is the beginning of a ten year period in which companies will redo their data centers to build them up with AI computing capabilities. WSJ also says China's top nuclear weapons research institute has bought these advanced chips even though it is on a US export blacklist since 1997. In 2022 the Biden administration imposed new licensing requirements on export of the most advanced chips. Since then Nvidia is following specifications for chips that allow it to export to China, says the WSJ.     ...

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Yellen tells the governor of Guangdong that China's huge subsidies for solar, EV and other industries disrupts "the level playing field" America needs. In all previous administrations  of both parties American economic ministry heads stayed silent or said it in a way that they were ignored. A culture of government staying out spread like wild fire under Reagan and "free to choose" advocates such as Friedman who did not realize the grave dangers to American manufacturing and its workers inside America, and to the world's other manufacturing capable nations such as India with overconcentration in one location. It was America's misfortune that economists and business leaders in the US were not listening enabling China to ignore this. By offering huge government subisidized incentives China and Taiwan shifted manufacturing away from the US in semiconductors, solar, EV's. It started with Apple and is still going on with Tesla. Today economists such as Yellen say economic resilience and supply chains are at risk before they said it lowered cost for consumers and failed to wake up when advanced technologies were at stake, as economists never trained in manufacturing had no knowledge of how it works with learning curves and knowhow that is built over decades, once lost hard to regain. The message fellow Americans is that trust your instincts and common sense, and trust observation which is what the Renaissance in the 15th century was all about and which put Europe ahead of Asia, to the great misfortune of Asia. Japan, China, have learned these lessons well, America as an immigrant nation is different from Europe, and must use its good sense to keep open the opportunities for its people and workers, and the people and workers of all nations that are manufacturing capable. Yellen said- "Direct and indirect government support is currently leading to production capacity that significantly exceeds China's domestic demand, as well as what the global market can bear...Overcapacity can lead to large volumes of exports at depressed prices, and it can lead to overconcentration of supply chains, posing a risk to global economic resilience,"    ...

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How a resurgence of violence by Muslim Kashmiris plays out in a new atmosphere of India-Pakistan rapprochement and the political uncertainty in Pakistan with the transition to democratically elected government there still being tested. The efforts this time were relative to the violence of a decade previously rather innocuous, efforts to break a blockade of a key highway by Hindu nationalists that blocked shipping out Kashmiri apple harvest to the outside world. The Hindus were reacting to Muslim Kashmiris protesting a grant of 98 acres by the government (later rescinded) to Hindu pilgrims visiting a religious site Amarnath in the Kashmir Himalayas.

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T-Mobile plans to spend $4 billion to upgrade its wireless network to LTE. The failed plan to merge with AT&T has affected T-Mobile because plans to upgrade its network were put on hold. As a result T-Mobile will be 2 years behind Verizon in upgrading to LTE and will be the last wireless network upgrading. Contract customers declined in the 4th quarter of 2011 by 802,000 with all the uncertainty surrounding the merger. AT&T made a cash payment to T-Mobile of 2.3 billion euros for the failed merger. However the situation has turned out negatively for Deutsche Telekom because of a 2.3 billion writedown in the value of T-Mobile USA ,and an additional 800 million euro writedown in Europe. If T-Mobile decides to offer the Apple iPhone to attract contract customers additional financial commitments will have to be made.

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  We show her the view from Europe on Ukraine in Feb 2025. Francois Hollande leader of the Socialists in France and former president says that the United Kingdom, France and Germany must be at the forefront of genuine European security. In this long interview he answers questions from Le Monde. He says US may withdraw its 80,000 troops from Europe in NATO. This will require European forces and European nuclear deterrent. In 1966 De Gaulle's successor president Pompidou said- "France must be returned to itself. Thus we are serving Europe and preparing the re-emergence of Europe so that it can play its part. Do not imagine that we are changing sides. We are against hegemony and so do not intend to favour Soviet hegemony, nor does our attitude towards the war in Vietnam encourage Chinese hegemony in that part of the world." Hollande says if this US withdrawal of troops from NATO happens will Article 5 will then apply to Europe? Hollande's answer is "it is upto us to prepare. Even without him."   On Merz's election as Germany's leader- Hollande says we will have to broaden the geographic scope of our deterrent force. Merz has expressed interest in nuclear deterrent from partners UK and France, France having proposed to Germany a mutual nuclear deterrent under president Pompidou, a successor to president De Gaulle in the 70's. ...

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The use of apps and tech based solutions have been largely ineffective in doing effective contact tracing and testing to isolate people with coronavirus. Epidemiologists question its effectiveness when it does not lead to people isolating themselves to prevent spread.  A major problem is lack of confidence in the tech based solutions. 27 states in the U.S. have no apps or are not developing one.  Apps do not use the entire set of tech resources available because of dilution from concerns about privacy. Another major problem is that there is no national approach. California, Washington and Oregon have a pilot program on the Google-Apple system, Delaware and Pennsylvania launched an app in September from Irish developer NearForm. New York and New Jersey started with a NearForm app in October. States using apps are doing this without much conviction that this is a tool that will work to do effective contact tracing and testing to isolate infected persons. For this reason one sees pilots and launches this late in the coronavirus pandemic. Early efforts stumbled.  The UK and French apps also proved ineffective. Germany opted for low tech solution that proved surprisingly effective in the first wave of the coronavirus. Germany relied on teams from state employees which used a national database, personal computers and phones to call individuals who needed to be isolated and tracked. Asian countries have less concern for privacy leading to apps being more effective. Even here low tech solutions with national database and teams of people with personal computers and phones calling and making personal contact including visiting homes has worked better than apps. Human relations skills to reassure people affected by coronavirus, legwork to contact personally at homes and check up, and persuasion to have people isolate have been more effective than app based impersonal tech solutions. ...

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Karishma Vaswani of the BBC points out that the Trump administration tariffs and the response from China with tariffs of its own, are not the beginning of a trade war but negotiating tactics of both sides. Behind the scenes and behind the declarations and position statements both sides are talking to each other and considering the options open to each. The U.S. position is that China has emerged with a bigger share of the global economy by dumping products, subsidizing its industries from solar panels to high tech ventures, and stealing American technology by forcing U.S. firms into joint ventures that increase pass through of advanced technology. U.S. firms seeking access to the Chinese market or using China as a manufacturing base such as Boeing, Apple, GE and other high tech companies are in ventures or manufacturing arrangements where China has access to advanced American technology. Nathaniel Taplin in his article in the WSJ also sees this as a negotiating position set out in the U.S. for talks with China. Taplin says the U.S. is in a stronger position in this negotiation because of the huge surplus of about $300 billion that China now has with the U.S., and which is increasing in 2018 with the strength of the dollar. The Trump administration is looking to correct the trade imbalance in the future by focussing on China's access to advanced U.S. technologies in the next phase of competition between the U.S., Europe and China. This limited objective is more likely to lead to concessions by China Taplin argues, because of two reasons. China needs the dynamism of U.S. firms and technology advances because these firms and Chinese firms that are getting foreign investment are the most productive part of the Chinese economy with jobs generated, rate of return about twice that of inefficient state run firms. China also needs access to advanced U.S. and European technologies even in a limited form as it pursues further modernization.   ...

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Tech is not going to fix this, say software experts from tech companies. Google and Apple's efforts in coming up with an app have fizzled out, says this report in thee WSJ. Has the U.S. lost precious time in waiting for an app by tech companies to be developed, instead of doing what India and Britain have done. India introduced its own app Aarogya Setu app from the Indian government. Britain had the National Health Service develop its app. India acted quickly. Is an app needed or essential? Germany decided that contact tracing based on Asian country experience was mainly about human contact tracers with skills to make the phone calls. All they needed was a centralized database on a computer and a phone. Germany set up teams at offices in each district in Germany and quickly plodded ahead even if all the offices were not fully staffed. In fact a third of the offices needed more people and resources. Yet the speed of action is something like 80 to 90% of the contact tracing effort when the team has the skill set to call. This is because clusters of infections do not wait - they spread. There is simply no time to waste. The German effort has produced the best results so far of any country of this size- Germany has 85 million people. The reproduction ratio is at 1.13 and Germany remains vigilant. It is the first country to reopen in Europe, and is methodically doing the right actions, much that the world can and should learn from. Contact tracing teams worked round the clock in the early days, they are still hard at work today, using their human skills to talk to people and find out who they were in contact with, calling the contacts in turn, at each step working to isolate where needed with followup calls from the state health departments. ...

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A meeting of European leaders from Germany, France, Spain, and Italy with African leaders from Libya, Chad and Niger, comes up with priority steps to take for reducing migration from African countries to Europe. Steps include aid to countries with high flow of migrants. The EU gave $10 million to Niger to fight illegal immigration. The French president Macron suggested setting up hotspots from where migrants could apply for legal migration. Chancellor Merkel cautioned that this applied only to humanitarian refugees and not to economic refugees. The presidents of Chad and Niger point out that the cause is poverty, and smugglers need to be diverted to other occupations such as commerce or farming. During 2017 to August 125,000 migrants have come across the Mediterranean on boats. Smugglers put people on small boats leading to many deaths and rescue efforts. 

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Microsoft is making management changes in the unit which makes the Xbox, Zune music player, phone software. There have been some successes with the Xbox gaming console, but the Zune music player and phone software have done poorly. Robbie Bach, the head of this group is leaving. Microsoft has also cancelled a project to make a tablet computer to compete with Apples's iPad. After years of working on the tablet computer Microsoft found itself falling completely behind when Apple's iPad became a sensational seller, and HP's acquisition of Palm also sent signals to Microsoft. Analysts say the departure of Bach who was with Microsoft for 22 years, and of other executives in the revamping, will do little to change things. They question that Ballmer has the same touch and feel for the customer, which is something rare, and which Apple has at this time.