Are you buying the brand or the product?

Below is an interesting video on why Apple isn't making it big in India and China. Simply put Apple products are just too expensive for these markets. If the consumers probably has the capacity to buy maybe thing would be different.

Apple certainly led the market in innovation with superior technology, user interface and user experience. This created the fanboys of Apple which to this day are diehards for the brand. Unfortunately technology and other brands have caught up. While I think Apple still has superior tech, it's not that much and Android may be better in some aspects. For markets that look for the value of the product over brand names Apple will have a hard time to compete. People buy brands for the image and not the function, whereas the Indian and China market seems to buy the functions over the brand.

Android simply covers the whole gamut of consumers, people who buy the product and people who value the brand. Xiaomi and Samsung covers the market with superior low end to high-end phones with superior quality across the market. Xiaomi has positioned itself as an innovative high quality value for money brand. They are known as the "Apple of China" minus the high cost of products.

Toyota or Lexus? Same products different brands.

Adding from a recent article: Apple is thinking of adjusting its international pricing strategy. Click to see article.

Lost Opportunities: Snapchat

Snapchat was one of the "unicorn" apps that startup communities love. These are one the that grows its user base rapidly and gets a lot of influencers to use it. It didn't get much traction locally but as all hip apps are local internet celebrities tried to jump into it. For some reason, Filipinos really didn't get into it. This is probably due as the video says, it was quite complicated to use. You have to know the username in order to follow that person - this was one of the reason I found it hard to use it. Instagram simply had a better user experience for me.

The feature that drew people in to Snapchat was that your photo disappeared after a few hours. Facebook tried to buy Snapchat but it was declined. Instead Facebook just copied all the features of Snapchat to Instagram which probably lead to its downfall. While it tried to adapt some of the changes they did failed. In the world of social media platforms it seems the big ones can simply kill the competition.

Know more about Snapchat lingo here.

Check out this video by Tech Insider about Snapchat

Biohacking, will this be the key to longevity?

I'm trying to be active with this blog once again and I'll do it via "baby steps" by posting interesting videos I find mostly in YouTube. There's a lot of trash there used for propaganda so I'll try to get stuff that I find interesting from reliable sources - this one from BBC.