Tag Archives: china

The Plight of Chinese Consumers

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As everyone knows, Apple unveiled several new products yesterday at their developers conference. New updates for iOS, OS X, and of course, the new Macbook Pro was the most discussed. Of most interest to me, was the new Chinese features that Apple introduced to iOS and OS X, especially the new language updates for Siri. It seems that Apple is concentrating more and more on its biggest market, which is China. I’m glad that companies such as Apple are finally becoming more aware of Asian consumers, and I hope more PC manufacturers can do the same, and more support for services such as RenRen, Youku, Baidu, QQ, Weibo, among others. China is the biggest market for luxury goods, and Apple is considered the premier manufacturer of computing devices in the world.

Which begs the question, how many of Chinese consumers can actually afford Apple products? The Macbook Pro with Retina Display in China actually sells for RMB 16,488!!! This is equivalent to more than $2500 USD. At Foxconn, China’s manufacturing plant for many US companies including Apple, Workers make a mere $386/month (as well as working 80+ hour weeks)! So, when the average Chinese family makes between $250-500 USD per month, how can they afford to buy the products they manufacture. This is the root of the problem; Asian workers often have to suffer with low wages in order for US consumers to get cheap products. Cheap labor = cheap products. That’s how Apple, HP and other companies can sell products for cheaper in the US than other countries. For China and other Asian countries, even though they manufacture in that country, they have to re-import US products and pay a substantial markup in order to get the same product!

The reason why luxury good manufacturers such as Apple, BMW, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Audi, etc can do so well in Asia is because of how culture works over there. In Asia, be it China, Japan, Korea or other countries, having a brand name product is seen as a status symbol, elevating you in the eyes of other Asians. If you can afford luxury goods, you are seen as more wealthy and successful. So the demand for these products are very high (and why there are so many knock offs in China). Because the demand is high, Apple and other companies can mark up their products substantially (such as Macbooks, iPads, iPhones, etc) and get away with it. 90% of Chinese consumers will probably have a hard time affording these products, but the very rich 10% can afford them, thus boosting their status.

This may be the most profitable way for Apple to run. However, it is not the ethical way. I think that more Chinese and Asian consumers should be able to afford their own products, and people shouldn’t have to sell their kidney to buy iPads. In order to do this, Apple should raise wages at their plant, increase the price of their products in the US, and lower the prices of their products overseas. This will anger US consumers, but in order for someone to gain, others have to lose. This will also cause Apple to lose profits, so corporate greed will probably prevent this from happening. But someday, I hope that the world will be more fair, and workers in other countries shouldn’t have to suffer for American consumers’ benefit.

Hunger games, Korean grammar, and Mobile Computing

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Hunger Games

I just finished watching the Hunger Games in theaters. You probably all heard of it by now. I’ve never read the book, so after watching it here’s my thoughts. I think the story seemed like it jumped a long too fast, a common problem when adapting books to movies. Some characters are not fleshed out at all. There’s gore in the movie even though its PG-13. but overall it was an okay movie. If you’ve watched Twilight and Harry Potter, there’s more of the same teenage fiction here, though somewhat more mature. I still can’t help thinking the book should have been written with an Asian American or Hispanic American lead. The movie felt like it was out of the 1950s. I mean, mostly Caucasian crowd with some scattering of African Americans. If this takes place in the future United States, wouldn’t white people be a minority by then? But I’m sure even if the book did have Asians, Hollywood would never cast an Asian American actor for a blockbuster film, of course not. Though I might add that the Asian American community is really looking for a rolemodel right now. What Jeremy Lin has demonstrated is that Asians are underrepresented, and overlooked by media, and we should strive to have more Asians out there doing creative arts like acting and performing, and being athletes, rather than being the usual business people / scientists / engineers / etc that are not prominent in the media.

Korean Grammer

Still some outstanding questions about Korean grammar.

-what does adding -ㄴ to a verb do? ie. 한다vs하다, 가다vs간다

-what does adding -긴 do?

-difference between 이야 and 이니?

-내가 vs 나는?

-겠다 vs 거야 vs 야지 for future tense (will do)

-what does adding -지 do? like 하는지,하지서 vs 하면,하지면

-what does adding -나 and -까 do?

-무슨 vs 뭐?

I’m studying Korean.
‎1. 난 한국어를 공부해.
2. 난 한국어를 공부하고 있어.
3. 난 한국어를 공부하지.
4. 난 한국어를 공부한다. (more for writing).

I’ll study Korean.
1. 난 한국어를 공부해야지.
2. 난 한국어를 공부할 거에요.
3. 난 한국어를 공부할거야.
4. 난 한국어를 공부할게.
5. 난 한국어를 공부할래.
6. 난 한국어를 공부하겠어.

I should study Korean
1. 난 한국어를 공부해야 돼.

I studied Korean.
1. 난 한국어를 공부했어.

나는 사과를 먹었어.
나는 사과를 먹었는데.
나는 사과를 먹었잖아.
나는 사과를 먹었지.
나는 사과를 먹었다고.

Mobile Computing Trends

There’s a good article on mobile computing right here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-mobile-deck-2012-3?op=1

Basically it talks about the future of mobile computing. We know that mobile apps and mobile web content will continue to grow at a rate faster than PCs did. But I think this article draws its results primarily from research done in the US. The USA is not a proxy for the rest of the world. We are the richest country in the world, and that explains part of the reason why mobile penetration and mobile content consumption is so high here. The key to get from this is that feature phones are still widely used in developing nations in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Those emerging markets are where most of the growth is going to be. Thus to make smartphones more popular, we should focus on making them more affordable to everyone. Once that happens, I can imagine many more apps designed and interpreted with multilingual use, and locale-specific implementations. Right now China is one of Apple’s biggest consumers, and they will only get bigger. In fact, the mindset we have to adopt for the future is not only to cater to US consumers (where the majority of smartphone users live) but to the rest of the world as well. In time, I believe this is what will happen.

On a side note, ever wonder why Chinese sites look so different than American sites? Look at www.netease.com or www.sohu.com and you can see that its very cluttered and alot of information on once page. Contrast this with the simpler web 2.0-style interfaces that American sites use, a la Twitter or Foursquare. I wonder what would happen if we take some American apps (most of which deliver content through the cloud) and port it over to China? How would sites like www.mint.com or www.foursquare.com or www.groupon.com be perceived if we make a chinese version and locale specific? That would be interesting to find out, and a good opportunity as well.

Update: Learning Korean

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Update: new, more indepth korean grammar post here.

So a couple posts back, I described how I was beginning to learn Korean, an exciting new language that is both similar yet different from Chinese. So far, I’ve found that although I’ve progressed, I haven’t progressed as quickly as I had when I first started.

The biggest difficulty I have with Korean is that there are just so many particles, so many verb conjugations, and so many ways of saying something using different characters. Its easier when I read Korean, but orally, when someone is speaking Korean fast (like at my church), it becomes very hard to determine what they are saying because first I have to process the context and then what sounds they are using. The double consonants (ㅃ,ㅉ,ㄸ,ㄲ,ㅆ) are very hard to differentiate for me from the single ones. And some words can be completely different if they are using double consonants or single consonants.

And there are alot of particles. The straightforward particles are the topic, subject and object particles. 저는 is the normal way of saying ‘I’ the first time you introduce yourself (‘는’ being the topic particle). But this is a rather formal way of doing it. 나는 is the more plain way of saying it. Of course some Korean words are only used in writing, rather than speech. ‘와/과’ is used more often than ‘하고’ in writing for the word ‘and/with’. And verb conjugations. There are so many irregular verbs, verbs that have silent letters in them, etc. I pretty much just have to memorize which ones are which. The conjugations can be fairly simple like 먹다 -> 먹어요 for the polite form of ‘to eat’ or more irregular like 크다 -> 커요 for ‘to be tall’, with one of the consonants, 으, removed when its conjugated.

And here is a general list of particles I have to remember:
-subject particle: -이/가, to denote subject noun.
-topic particle: -은/는, to denote topic noun.
-plural particle: -들, to emphasize plurality on a noun.
-object particle: -을/를, to denote noun being acted on by a verb.
-case particle: -으로/로 , to denote a noun is being used (by,with), or direction, or selection, or change.
-possession particle: -의, to denote possession between two nouns.
-location particles: -에, which can denote place, time or quantity. -에서, which indicates a dynamic location or source of action.
-conjunction particles: -와/과,-하고, to link two nouns together.
-special particle: -도, which adds the meaning of also/too/even to a noun.
-special particle: -만, which adds the meaning of just/only to a noun.
-special particle: -이나/나, which means something similar/or/as many as/about.
-special particle: -부터,까지 which means from a time/place to another time/place.

Verb particles
-으면/면, which adds the meaning ‘if’ to a verb.
-고, which adds the meaning ‘and’ to a verb.
-거나, which adds meaning ‘or’ to a verb.
-지만, which adds meaning ‘but’ to a verb.
-는, which turns a verb into a present noun modifier. (-ㄴ/은 for past, -ㄹ/을 for future).
-ㄴ/는, which turns an adjective into a present noun modifier.  (-ㄴ/은 for past, -ㄹ/을 for future).

See, that’s a lot of particles. Chinese only has a few (的，得，地，着，被，给，对，向，跟，和，与). In addition, I don’t have opportunity to practice Korean alot. But anyways… here’s hoping I can improve enough to go to Korea next year.