Modified android phones & other news

1 minutes estimated reading time

Google Under Pressure as Modified Android Phones Take Off | TheNextWeb – 20 per cent sounds on the low side to me for modified Android phones. Why would you need modified Android variants?  You have modified Android phones because Google services are basically unuseable in China and North Korea. Amazon’s Fire phone and tablets are essentially modified Android variants. Finally the Yandex app store in Russia which I suspect is part of a wider fork of Android there, with yet more modified Android variants using it. More  content that is similar to this story here.

Social Media, Indonesia’s election, and the growth of e-commerce | CampaignAsia – E-commerce has taken off in Indonesia. This has been a mix of traditional e-commerce and services like taxi rides and food delivery. Indonesia has managed to build up its own national champions in these fields. Social media has been used to fight a ferocious election campaign (paywall)

Service activity at worst level in nearly years, HSBC says | Shanghai Daily – HSBC’s PMI index skews towards medium sized businesses and includes no state owned enterprises. But the data is probably more honest and has less harmonisation going on than official Chinese government data

Apple Hires Former Social Media Director Of Nike And Burberry | Fast Company – but his job title is digital marketing director of Apple Retail. It will be interesting to see how this story develops over time.

Procter and Gamble to Divest 100 Brands – Analyst Insight from Euromonitor International – interesting analysis. I was a bit surprised. Procter & Gamble hasn’t treated its brands as a portfolio in the same that Unilever has historically and has been known to market products alongside each other in ads to build up to a P&G story.

McDonald’s hit by social media disaster on Instagram | Marketing Interactive – live and learn I guess, though disaster is a bit strong

Why Coke’s experiment with vitaminwater turned sour | Quartz – interesting to see Coke acknowledging the change on its blog