China Medical Zone Projects

Major New Development in China created New Opportunities for Medical Device and Technology Companies

Executive Summary:

China is the second largest economy after the USA. Number 1 in cell phone market, cement and many other segments. Similar to many western countries, China is facing strong demand in healthcare and home care. In 2014, Beijing hospitals have over one million visitor from other regions. This trend cannot continue as it will put the burden on major hospitals of Beijing.

As a result, the regional government and local businesses such as real estate developers have started the Medical Zone Development Initiative to help levitate the situation. The project will include designate a large piece of land in selected cities to build hospitals, health care and home care facilities. Additionally, there will be research funding for both industry and academia to help fight diseases and develop new medical technology and equipments. In 2015, it will start off with Chongqing and followed by Beijing (multiple regions), Ningxia, Qingdao (multiple regions)/also know as Tsingtao where the famous beer brewery is based, Nanjing, Changzhou, Wuxi, Sichuan (known for its spicy food), Chengdu, Shanghai (multiple regions), Fujian, Guangzhou (also known as Canton), Hainan (known as the Chinese Hawaii) and more. These are the known cities at time of writing.

What does this mean?

These regions are looking to collaborate with leading medical technology companies and research facilities to develop a process for standard, cooperation and procurement. It is very likely once a process is set up the other cities will follow. So this provides the golden opportunities to participate at the ground level. At the end of January, the project will host a round table discussions/conference in Chongqing. You are invited to participate.

Act now!

Seating is limited to the qualified companies and is by invitation only. If you are interested in doing business in China and/or have representative in China, please contact me at your earliest convenience. (At this time, Philips has confirmed to attend among some Chinese companies).

First Round Table meeting:

Location: Chongqing (Hotel info will follow)

Date: January 31, 2015

John Koon

Continua member relations

China Medical Zone Project USA representative

john@techidea.com

858-729-4018 (cell)

More information

YouTube stars turn authors

Doityourselfmarketing: online success inspiration.

YouTube stars created a large following. Now they want to publish books. Here is one example.

Not too many people have $1,000,000 promotional budget of risk capital to invest to launch a product or a service. What if you don’t have a big budget but want to do great marketing? May be we can get inspired from Michelle Phan.

A few years ago, she launched her make-up services video using YouTube and worked at it. Today she had over 4 million followers. Ultimate content marketing?

Michelle Phan, was mentioned in 2010 (you have to scroll down when you click this link), now recognized as the YouTube make-up guru. Today, she is publishing a book. (when you watch this video, you may skip in 17 sec. sorry)

Get inspired.

Here are other examples.

Tech Idea Research: John Koon 

Smartphone watch Q2 2014 - Lenovo

Q2 2014

The winner is.............

Lenovo, the largest PC maker in the world, is gaining marketing share in Smartphones!

While Lenovo maintains number 4 worldwide, it gained market share in Q2 and now becomes number 1 in China followed by Xiaomi.

The battle of the Smartphones

Source: IDC/WSJ

Apple and Samsung are in fierce competition to be the number one Smartphone supplier. While Samsung is taking the lead now, Apple is making its next move - introducing the enxt iPhone with larger screens; 4.7 and 5.5 inches. What do they look like?  

But the road to success may be bumpy. (video) What will happen next in the battlefield is any body's guess. How much the Smartphone market has changed in less than 10 years. In 2006, the total Smartphone unit shipment was around 64 millions. Today, over 1,000,000,000 units are expected to be shipped annually. 

	Unit Shipment %
Samsung	29
Apple	18
Huawei	6
Lenovo	5
LG	5
Others	38

  Source: IDC/WSJ

Looking back 9 years, how the mighty have fallen from the top 5 list in such a short time!

In 2005/2006, Nokia had more than 50% of the market share. RIM (Blackberry) was number 2 and owned the enterprise market. Motorola and Palm were among the leaders. 

It is no surprise that the 10 most popular phones sold in May were Apple and Samsung brands. The big surprise was the Chinese brand Xiaomi made it to the list. Xiaomi introduced a line of low cost phones aimed at the massive population in China and India.

Who will take the number one spot five years from now?

TECH IDEA RESEARCH: jk

Hello, Blackberry is calling.......

Hello, Blackberry is calling.....

Tech Idea Updates: Smartphone news

RIM, maker of Blackberry, announced a surprise profit but the company is still on life support. See chart. Once an enterprise favorite, RIM continues to see its sales slides and is struggling to regain market share. Wall Street Journal. Or see below.

Happy Days for John Chen, RIM CEO

Tech Idea Updates by jk


 *******************************************************************************
From Wall Street Journal

BlackBerry Posts Surprise Small Profit, but Revenue Falls

Smartphone Maker Lowers Expenses, but Sales Remain Under Pressure

By Ben Dummett

Updated June 19, 2014 5:05 p.m. ET

BlackBerry Ltd. 's plans to introduce new smartphones and updated mobile-management software this year remain on track, as Chief Executive John Chen's push to reduce expenses helped the Canadian company eke out a surprise profit.

BlackBerry gave early indications that its effort to reignite revenue by selling new smartphones, software and security services to corporate and business customers is working even as it continues to slash costs.

The company is "at the tail end of its cost-cutting" effort and is now working to boost revenue, Mr. Chen said on the company's earnings call. In the fiscal first quarter, ended May 31, the company reduced its adjusted operating expenses by 57% from a year ago and 13% from the fourth quarter. That helped the company generate an unexpected profit of $23 million for the period, well ahead of the $423 million loss it posted three months ago and its year-earlier loss of $84 million.

The Waterloo, Ontario company said sales of its newly launched low-cost Z3 smartphone are exceeding expectations, and said its plans to launch other devices later this year remain on schedule. Meanwhile, some enterprise customers are showing renewed interest in the BlackBerry technology that companies use to manage or oversee phones issued to employees, Mr. Chen said.

Still, the CEO remained cautious, as the company's revenue remains under pressure and isn't expected to start growing for months. "There's still a lot of work to do," Mr. Chen told shareholders at the company's annual meeting in Waterloo. "Will we get back to the iconic state [BlackBerry once held]? I don't know, but we will try."

BlackBerry's shares gained 9.7% to $9.09 in New York Stock Exchange Trading on Thursday.
"We were expecting incremental baby steps and that's what the results reflect," Ramon Llamas, an analyst at research firm International Data Corp., said. "But it's still going to be a long slog" for the turnaround plan to succeed, he said.

Blackberry's history of falling short of expectations helped trigger a management shake-up and led to Mr. Chen's appointment in November. The company had faced mounting losses since its 2013 bet on a series of new phones and an operating system called BB10 fell flat against competition from Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and other device makers.
To stem this tide, Mr. Chen has focused on both cost-cutting and finding new sources of revenue to turn around the company. But that remains a challenge as the company's first-quarter revenue fell 69% to $966 million.

The company said its cash position improved, rising to $3.1 billion at the end of the quarter from $2.7 billion three months earlier, helped by proceeds from previously announced real-estate sales and a tax refund. Mr. Chen said the company continues to target break-even cash flow by the end of its current fiscal year.

BlackBerry said its first-quarter revenue breakdown was about 39% for hardware, 54% for services and 7% for software and other sources.
In the first quarter, BlackBerry said it sold about 2.6 million phones, down from the 3.4 million it sold in the prior period. On its conference call, BlackBerry said 65% of the devices sold in the latest quarter were BB10 phones, while the rest were legacy BB7 devices.

Mr. Chen is betting on the introduction of new devices aimed at emerging markets where BlackBerry remains a relatively popular brand, and on its traditional government and corporate customer base, to regain market share.

In May, BlackBerry launched the Z3 in Indonesia, a device priced under $200 and targeted at emerging markets. This week, BlackBerry launched the phone in Vietnam and plans to do the same in the coming weeks India.

Ultimately the Z3 will be available in a total of nine countries. The company originally projected it would sell a total of a million devices over their life, but Mr. Chen now said he thinks sales will exceed that level based on their performance in Indonesia. He declined to provide initial sales figures.
BlackBerry also plans to launch a new phone, called Passport, in London this September. The new phone, which has a square face, is larger than the company's current offerings. "I call it either the world's smallest phablet or the world's biggest phone," Mr. Chen said as he displayed it for shareholders.

BlackBerry is also catering to fans of its keyboard and email services with the launch of the Classic, which is expected toward the end of this year.

Meanwhile, in a bid to regain enterprise customers, BlackBerry is upgrading its device-management software technology, which handles security and software for smartphones that a company issues to or oversees for its employees. In this field, the company competes against major players such as International Business Machines Corp. and Citrix Systems Inc.

The company plans to introduce the latest version of its device-management software near the end of this year and is now offering enticements that make it easier for customers to switch to BlackBerry's current offering and then upgrade to the new version when it is released.

Deepak Kaushal, analyst at GMP Securities Ltd., said the results show that BlackBerry's management team has stemmed the company's bleeding – for now. "What they've earned is a pause before they launch new hardware and services later this year, but the challenge remains tough," said Mr. Kaushal. "I think the real question mark is their subscribers. If they can't create subscribers, they've got more restructuring to go through."

—Judy McKinnon and David George-Cosh contributed to this article.
Write to Ben Dummett at ben.dummett@wsj.com

Playing with "Fire" in the Smartphone market?

Tech Idea Quick Updates - New Smartphone

June 19, 2014

Playing with "Fire" in the Smartphone market?

Amazon has joined the volatile Smartphone market with its 4.7 inch "Fire" Wall Street. Bloomberg Businessweek

Must be nice to be able to see bigger images without straining. Some said Amazon positioned the Fire model as a walking registrar than a real Smartphone. Here is a comparison of the Fire with other models with similar size screen.

Amazon comparing with Apple, Samsung, HTC

What is the Smartphone market like? In one word. Brutal.

The market is huge. But many have gained and lost their glory in a relatively short time. Once Nokia was the leader. Now bought by Microsoft is still struggling to keep its sales from sliding. Nokia Market Share.

RIM's Blackberry lost its leadership as the one-time enterprise/corporation favorite. Now with new leadership it hopes to regain some of its glory. Samsung is going strong with the Android OS fighting with Apple's iPhone all the way. The Taiwan based HTC is struggling to regain its foothold but it may not be easy. HTC

Lenovo, the largest PC maker in the world, is taking a bold step to invest in the Smartphone space. Perhaps the one to watch is the Chinese company called Xiaomi. It is using its low-cost Smartphone to dominate China and soon India. Xiaomi

Xiaomi prepares to enter India

Here is the Smartphone line up today:

1.      Samsung

2.      Apple

3.      LG

4.      Lenovo

5.      HTC

6.      RIM (Blackberry)

As to what the future will hold, we will keep watching. JK

Is Marketing fun?

Marketing is fun.