Hurun listings & more news

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Hurun

Money slipping through China’s wealthiest fingers: Hurun|WantChinaTimes.com – Hurun is like the Forbes or Sunday Times rich lists. In other countries being on the rich list brings scrounging letters from charities and assorted liggers, possibility heightened security risks due to kidnapping attempts. Being in Hurun also means immense government scrutiny. Even the most politically connected would be wise to not want to appear in Hurun. Yet, Chinese entrepreneurs still view a Hurun listing as a reflection of personal status and prestige that they look to leverage into further business. Hurun is widely used a consultant and partner for luxury brands. Hurun seems to offer everything from contacts to market sizing for luxury brands. I am surprised Rupert Hoogewerf is allowed to run Hurun Report in China given the sensitivity of the information

Branding

Interbrand: Apple, Amazon, Samsung fast becoming brand darlings, ousting crusty traditional labels — Engadget

China

China’s “One Country, Two Systems” Under Threat | The Diplomat – I am surprised China has managed to resist its Stalinist instincts for this long

China sets leadership succession congress for November 8| Reuters – my money is on the dangerous neo-Stalinist authoritarian ultra-nationalist Xi Jingping. Bo Xilai’s brand of red tub thumping has meant that even though he is out of favour, he has set the agenda politically in the Communist Part of China. Expect a massive consolidation of power coupled with slowing economic growth massive acceleration on lightning rod issues in foreign policy as he plays for the nationalist peanut gallery. He is a leader in the mould of Mao rather than Deng. His views are at odds with the more liberal leanings of his father who was communist party royalty

Information Processing: “… the good things just don’t get shown to Western investors”

Consumer behaviour

China’s younger generation sees changing marriage landscape

Pew: Almost 70 Percent Of Affluent Adults Own Smartphones – a new digital divide?

Double Lives: Study Reveals Germans Less Confident than they Seem – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Economics

Surveys hint at poor level of social mobility in China|WantChinaTimes.com – I would imagine that this would be pretty similar in many western countries. However it presents a problem of social instability in a middle income country like China which depends on a compact of the people staying out of politics so long as the Party looks after them

More Money, More Problems in South Korea | The Diplomat

S Korea: reasons to be cheerful | beyondbrics – beyond the scary household debt numbers things are looking pretty good

Cellphones Are Eating the Family Budget – WSJ.com – disrupting substitute entertainment products: eating out, children’s confectionery sales. Not at all surprised by this, I was hearing this back at the first MobileYouth conference panels that I spoke at

Factory activity caps worst quarter in three years: Markit| Reuters

Finance

Silicon Valley’s Strangest Sex Scandal Gets More Dramatic Yet – Business Insider – interesting that this hasn’t been settled and they don’t seem to have done anything to help their legal case. Are they hoping legal muscle and strong arm tactics will work or do they have something else that they know? Badly handled from a PR PoV

Ellen Pao Files For Wrongful Termination – Business Insider – one long train wreck in slow-motion

The sociology of risk and the dark side of dot-com parties – SiliconValley.com

Presenting The World’s Biggest Hedge Fund You Have Never Heard Of | ZeroHedge

FMCG

Deal Profile: Kraft’s Snack Spinoff – WSJ – basically a sign that the Cadbury buy didn’t have the desired effect on the Kraft share price

Ideas

Some technology curbs creativity | Monocle

What Happens When We Reach ‘Peak Car’?

AirAsia X to make first 7 rows of economy class child-free zone ‹ Japan Today – interesting move

Innovation

US Defense Biz Outlook Grim, Foreign Sales Won’t Save It: Deloitte

3M buying Ceradyne for about $847 million – The Sacramento Bee – Ceradyne does interesting things with ceramic material innovation including nuclear fuel pellets and ballistic plates

Room Temperature Superconductivity Found in Graphite Grains – Technology Review – IF this is true, things could be getting very interesting

Japan

A New Tech Generation Defies the Odds in Japan – NYTimes.com

Chinese economist weighs up how to inflict damage on Japan

Korea

A Rare Analyst Discussion of Weakness at Samsung – WSJ – Samsung is overleveraged and could damage the Korean government as well

South Korean Companies Give Bonuses as Thanksgiving Nears – WSJ

Luxury

Jing Daily: The Business of Luxury and Culture in China

Mainland Chinese Students Eager to Enroll Abroad, Just Not in Taiwan – WSJ – education could be considered a luxury product in China as it is used by parents to show ‘success’. I have questions about this research. Chinese propaganda doesn’t see Taiwan as the separate country that it obviously is. Secondly, it wouldn’t be viewed as a high status move both of which would impact on the survey and its methodology

How China’s wealthy transfer their assets abroad

Is Chanel the Swatch of luxury? | Material World – is this Chanel becoming vertically integrated and getting a monopoly position

Media

Facebook Lays Out All Of Its New Targeting Techniques In One Easy-To-Read Blog Post – Forbes

Microsoft launching news operation, new MSN | Reuters – I think that this is as much about stepping out of legacy infrastructure of MSN as it is about journalism

Newspapers and TV drag down Zenith’s UK adspend forecast – Brand Republic News – no olympic dividend

Marketing, China ad spend to hit RMB 440 billion, CHINA, ADVERTISING, Research, Budgets, | Market-interactive.com

Social TV Comes To China: Kaixin001.com Teams With Samsung, Haier, Hisense

Study: Smaller news websites depend more on social media for traffic than larger sites – Poynter

New Google Ad Planner Will Exclude Domains Outside Google Network – Search Engine Watch (#SEW)

Facebook Lets Businesses Plug In CRM Email Addresses To Target Customers With Hyper-Relevant Ads | TechCrunch

Eric Schmidt Says Google Would Love to Replace Microsoft as Yahoo!’s Search Partner – Forbes – but the same antitrust barriers that Microsoft would rake up still remain

Pew study: News consumption up via mobile, social media | Internet & Media – CNET News

Portugal’s prosecutor punts P2P case • The Register

BBC News – Japan introduces piracy penalties for illegal downloads

More spring cleaning | Official Google Blog – with no Adsense for feeds, does feedburner make any sense for Google anymore?

Online

Mobile health is taking off but what’s still in its way? — GigaOM

KitchenAid Twitter Account Sends Offensive Tweet About Obama’s Deceased Grandmother (TWEETS)

Mobile Phones and Tablets Now Account for 1 in 8 U.S. Internet Page Views

Facebook Usage Declining – Business Insider

Friendster Founder Jonathan Abrams Launches Nuzzel: A Fast, Simple, Social News Reader | TechCrunch

Google Bought Something, Announced Some Google+ Numbers, And You Probably Aren’t Impressed | TechCrunch

Security

Looking inside your screenshots – steganography in real-world application

EU Officials Propose Internet Cops On Patrol, No Anonymity & No Obscure Languages (Because Terrorism!) | Techdirt – because this all worked really well in Korea when Cyworld got cracked and wholesale identity theft occurred

New Zealand Prime Minister orders enquiry into “unlawful” spying of Kim Dotcom (Jon Russell/The Next Web)

Software

Windows 8 early adoption numbers: low compared with Windows 7 – not as bad as it looks as there aren’t that many PCs would could use all the features of Windows 8 yet

The Future of Customer Service: Using technology to increase both efficiency and relationship strength | Trends in the Living Networks

Mark Zuckerberg promises a native Android app, says betting on HTML5 for mobile was a ‘mistake’ | The Verge

Russia’s Yandex combines Chromium and Opera code for new browser | ZDNet – all of which misses out that WebKit came from KDE Conqueror and Apple’s work on Safari…

Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use? | John Battelle’s Search Blog

Groklaw – SCO Files Final Chapter 11 Report in Bankruptcy, Files August MORs; Now It’s Onward and Downward in Chapter 7 ~pj

Survey: iOS 6 Leads To Decrease In Device Satisfaction Among iPhone Users | TechCrunch

Samsung plans acquisitions to become a software company – Rethink Wireless – it will be interesting to see how this clashes with Google’s plans

Technology

Thunderbolt, on an iPhone 5? ~ I, Cringely

After a decade of research, Intel shows off its digital radio chip | VentureBeat

Intel Confirms Decline of Server Giants HP, Dell, and IBM | Wired.com

Ten Office Items that Will Be Relics by 2017 – Technology Review

Coding Horror: The PC is Over – hyperbole but some interesting data points

Telecoms

AFP: Japan’s Softbank to buy rival eAccess for $2.3 bn

Web of no web

Apple-Google Maps Talks Crashed Over Voice-Guided Directions – AllThingsD

(24) Maps (iOS app): Why is everyone so obsessed with picking faults with Apple’s new maps on the iPhone? – Quorav- good discussion on everything wrong with Apple’s Maps app

Wireless

Microsoft Surface Phone release date: Windows Phone 8, 2013 launch

Communities Dominate Brands: Previewing Nokia Q3 Results later this month? Kantar confirms disasterous smartphone collapse

StreetInsider.com – Credit Suisse Downgrades Nokia (NOK) to Underperform; Things Aren’t Getting Better, a Break-Up Needed – interesting that Microsoft isn’t seen as a purchaser

Samsung schedules strategy meeting with Google’s Schmidt over Apple’s Android war – SlashGear

TI ready for complete exit from smartphones – Rethink Wireless

Just In Case You Forgot How Far RIM Has Fallen

Nokia: BMO Cuts to Sell, Doubts Windows Phone Appeal – Barrons.com