KFC China launched a virgin mojito drink with a 1960s feel to the ad. Its a bit of an odd product for KFC, even in China particularly with its positioning against drinking. Quite how the product development process and consumer insight worked to produce it is beyond me. Beautifully produced advert
Great documentary on Sterns Music (of Sterns Edits fame)
High Snobriety have done their first documentary. It looks like the kind of thing I would expect from Vice. Given High Snobriety’s streetwear literate audience I was surprised at how ‘basic’ it approaches the topic. Korean’s historic fashion industry, its association with replicas since the days of Daper Dan and the retail infrastructure stifled by chaebols are issues. But streetwear couldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the Korean textile industry – Daper Dan connection. The market in Korea reminded me very much of the ‘snide’ garments that were popular in the UK scene through the 1980s and 1990s.
On a secondary note the size of the YouTube video embed was restricted to 560 pixels wide. Not sure why
The recent collaboration between New York’s Supreme and Louis Vuitton seems like a natural fit. The reality is that luxury and streetwear have been dancing around each other for a good while.
Snide started it all
Snide was slang in the 1980s for fake or counterfeit. Hip Hop and the Caribbean-influenced Buffalo movement in the UK each used counterfeit and real luxury in their own way.
Daniel Day, better known as Dapper Dan was a was a Harlem-based craftsman and business man who dressed a lot of New York based artists from the golden age of hip hop. Dan’s first hip hop client was LL Cool J back in 1985. Dan’s style was luxe, the finest silks and furs were standard issue – think Puff Daddy before Puff Daddy. They went for customised outfits with their branding on which Dan provided. As the scene took off Dan incorporated suit lining material (which replicated the likes of the Fendi, Bally or MCM brands) and Gucci or Louis Vuitton branded vinyl to make one-off products.
He customised trainers, clothing and even car interiors. Dan’s own Jeep Wrangler had an interior retrimmed in MCM branded vinyl.
Much of the luxury branding Dan used was coming in from Korean factories which at that time supplied the fake trade. Now similar products would have come out of China. I took a trip to the South China City complex in 2010 where fabric suppliers would offer Louis Vuitton labels and Supreme tags side-by-side. I can only imagine that the Korean suppliers of the 1980s had similar markets in textile industry centres like Deagu. Outside of hip hop, Dan was the go-to tailor for all the hustlers in Harlem – so you can see how he could have got the hook-up into the counterfeit suppliers.
At the time hip hop culture was not in a relationship with brands who where concerned about how it might affect them. LL Cool J was the first artist to get a deal with Le Coq Sportif. Run DMC got a long term deal with Adidas after their single ‘My Adidas’ became successful. But these were the exceptions to the rule. So with Dan’s help they co-opted the brands to try and demonstrate success.
Over in the UK, the Buffalo collective of stylists, artists and photographers including Ray Petri, Jamie Morgan, Barry Kamen (who modelled for Petri), Mark Lebon and Cameron McVey. Buffalo was known as an attitude, which threw contrasting styles together and filtered into fashion shoots and influenced the collections of major designers including Yohji Yamamoto, Jean Paul Gaultier and Comme des Garçons. Even if you didn’t know what Buffalo was, you would have recognised the aesthetic from the likes of i-D, Blitz, New Musical Express and Arena.
Buffalo mixed Armani jackets with Doctor Martens work boots, or a Puma bobble hat. Petri used music to sound track his process and this was pretty similar to the kind of stuff that influenced street wear pioneer Shawn Stussy over in California. Motown and hip-hop to dub reggae was the sound which explains the Feeling Irie t-shirts created by the white surfboard maker.
If you thought Bros looked cool in their MA-1 bomber jackets and stone washed Levi’s 501 jeans – there was a direct stylistic line back to Buffalo – rehabilitating the items from their link to skinhead culture.
Buffalo permeated into the street style of the decade; influencing the likes of Soul II Soul. Meanwhile over in Bristol The Wild Bunch were yet to morph into Massive Attack. Two members headed to London; producer Nelle Hooper and Miles Johnson (aka DJ Milo who went on to work in New York and Japan). A shoot was organised by i-D magazine and they turned up wearing their street clothes alongside DJ Dave Dorrell and model / stylist Barnsley. At the time, it was considered to be ‘very Buffalo’ in feel, but Dave Dorrell admitted in an interview that they had just came as they were. Dorrell wore his t-shirt as ‘advertising’ for it.
The Hermes t-shirt and belt were snide, the Chanel Number 5 t-shirt sported by Dave Dorrell were being knocked out by a group of friends. Young people in London co-opted brands just like the hip-hop artists heading to Dapper Dan’s in Harlem.
Homage
From 1980, surfer Shawn Stussy had been growing an clothing empire of what we would now recognise as streetwear. Stussy had originally came up with the t-shirts as an adjunct and advertisement of his main business – selling surfboards. But the clothing hit emerging culture: skating, punk, hip-hop and took on a life of its own. It went global through Stussy’s ‘tribe’ of friends that he made along the way.
Stussy is known for his eclectic influences and mixing media: old photographs alongside his own typography. In a way that was unheard of in brand circles at the time, Stussy manifested his brands in lots of different ways. The back to back SS logo inside a circle was a straight rip from Chanel; the repeating logo motif that appeared in other designs was a nod to MCM and Louis Vuitton.
All of this went into the cultural melting pot of world cities like Tokyo, New York, London and Los Angeles. Stussy went on to do collaborations from a specially designed party t-shirt for i-D magazine’s birthday party to the cover art of Malcolm Maclaren records. Collaboration with mundane and high-end brands is backed into streetwear’s DNA.
(Neighborhood x Coke Zero was something I was involved with during my time in Hong Kong.)
Japan with its engrained sense of quality and wabisabi took the Buffalo mix-and-match approach to the next level. Japan’s own streetwear labels like Visivim, Neighborhood, W-Taps, The Real McCoy and A Bathing Ape (BAPE) took streetwear product quality, exclusivity and price points into luxury brand territory. That didn’t stop BAPE from making a snide versions of various Rolex models under the ‘Bapex’ brand.
Some two decades later Supreme came up in New York. The brand takes design appropriation and homage to a new level. Every piece Supreme seems to do is a reference to something else. The famous box logo rips from Barbara Kruger’s piece ‘I shop therefore I am’. From taking a snide swipe at consumerism to ending up in the belly of the beast took Supreme a relatively short time. This heritage of appropriation didn’t stop Supreme from using legal means against people it felt had appropriated its ‘look’.
In an ironic twist of fate, Supreme was sued by Louis Vuitton in 2000 and yet the 2017 collaboration looks exceptionally similar to the offending items…
North East Asia’s fast growing economies had been borne out of learning from developed market expertise, state directed focus on exports and ruthless weeding out of weaker businesses. Intellectual property was cast aside at various points. Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and China went from making knock-off products to displacing Europe and the US as the leading luxury markets.
Asian luxury consumers, particularly those second generation rich in China were younger than the typical customer luxury brands cater too. These consumers bought product as they travelled taking in style influences as they went. First from nearby markets like Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore and then Korea. This drew from a melange of hip hop, streetwear, Buffalo styling and contemporary western designers like Vivienne Westwood – as well as the more matronly styles of the traditional European luxury houses.
The luxury brands had to adapt. They brought in new designers who themselves were drawing from similar influences. These designers also collaborated with sportswear brands like Alexander McQueen and Puma or Jeremy Scott and Raf Simons for Adidas.
Luxury brands got seriously into new product categories making luxe versions of training shoes that could be charitably called a homage to the like of Nike’s Air Force 1.
Bringing things full circle
As the supreme_copies Instagram account notes the collaboration with Supreme and Louis Vuitton brings things full circle with the pieces having a nod to Dapper Dan’s custom work as well as Supreme’s own ‘homage’. Luxury brand MCM (Michael Cromer München), which Dan borrowed from extensively in the 1980s was restructured in 1997 with shops and brand being sold separately. The brand was eventually acquired eight years later by the Korean Sungjoo Group. Korea now has its own fast developing luxury fashion and cosmetics brand industry. Textile city Deagu which was the likely source of Dapper Dan’s fabric is now a fashion and luxury business hub in its own right. The Korean entertainment industry is a trend setter throughout Asia. For instance, Hallyu drama My Love From A Star drove breakout sales for the Jimmy Choo ‘Abel’ shoe.
The only question I still have is why did a move like Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Supreme take so long? The luxury brands spend a lot on customer insight, they were using social listening far longer than they had been on social media. They know that a customer wearing their jacket could have a Visivim backpack slung over the shoulder and a pair of Adidas Stan Smiths on their feet. Customers mix-and-match Buffalo style for all but the most formal occasions. For streetwear brands, collaboration is in their DNA and they get an additional leg-up in the quality stakes.
A few years ago, I was involved in a project that used QRcodes on OOH (out of home) activity for a retail launch. QRcode scanners varied in performance. In addition you had to think about:
Contrast – did the QRcode stand out?
Relative aspect – would it be too big or too small for the audience to scan?
In the UK, QRcodes are seen by marketers as old hat (but then they didn’t ‘get’ them in the same way that Asia did). Other people don’t really understand how to use them.
Above is the picture of the local cafe around the corner from my office. The QRcode is too disjointed and blurred to read. I asked a member of staff about it and he told me that he thought it was some type of logo…
Here is a copy of the slides that I pull together (when I have the time) each month of publicly available data that would be of use.
This month I have some new data around search which came from disclosures at Google I/O in terms of search volumes. We talk about social as if search has gone out of style but its growth is still staggering, driven by mobile device penetration.
Looking at global search revenue over time, Google’s monopoly position becomes immediately apparent.
More details about me here.
Full presentation available for download as a PDF on Slideshare
The Korean Cultural Centre has a fortnightly screening of films. The latest one that I went to was Granny’s Got Talent or 헬머니 (pronounced Helmeoni – a literal translation would be Hell Granny).
The premise is built around an old woman who is released from jail. She lost contact with her eldest son and tries to build that connection whilst living with her youngest son. The eldest son is a salary man with an over-bearing set of rich in-laws. The youngest son an inveterate gambler. To bail the youngest son out of trouble she participates in a Korean reality TV show based around cursing and chaos ensues. Veteran Korean actress carries off the role of Hell Granny with aplomb. I laughed so hard at some points I ended up crying.
The raucous bawdy humour works despite subtitles and has some amazing comedic set-pieces. But this rudeness is only the top layer in the story, where the viewer gets a glimpse at the hard life a strong woman had to live in a fast-developing South Korea.
The film works on a number of levels touching a number of distinctly Korean themes including the obsession with hierarchy, its turbulent political past, the corrupt aspects of chaebols and the love of family (no matter how dysfunctional).
Mobile World Congress (or in industry parlance MWC 2016) is where the telecoms industry goes to set out its stand. It has gradually changed from being a conference where the big issues of the day are hashed out, to more of a trade show a la CES or CeBIT.
From a brand point of view, it was of interest to me for two reasons:
It offers largely culture neutral brand discussions, many of which occur online
I have an interest, having worked on a few mobile brands during my agency career (Palm, Ericsson, Verizon Wireless, Samsung, Qualcomm, Telenor Myanmar and Huawei)
I pulled this slide ware together for a talk I am giving at an internal event at an agency.
The first data that I have put together is looking at the amount of mentions that occurred regardless of the channel. It is a relatively easy data point to pull out of monitoring systems very quickly.
Obviously the value of mentions will depend on how many people view them, what is the context that the mention appears in. What was the content around it? Who said it, are they expert or trustworthy? So looking purely at the number of mentions would be crude, offering little value apart from nice PowerPoint slides.
Breaking the mentions down by platform gives an idea of relative marketing communications competencies of brands. So looking at Huawei and Xiaomi shows contrasting approach to building talkability and conversations. Huawei focuses on traditional media channels where as Xiaomi focuses on social.
By comparison LG and Samsung seem to have a more holistic approach.
I then moved on beyond the mention data to try and look at relative authority of whoever mentioned the brand and looking at the relative distribution by brand and channel.
I had done some initial analysis on the event in general here. These numbers showed how well brands had built high authority communities and the discussions around them.
What was quite surprising was the polarised authority of mainstream media sources. Newswire syndication had destroyed authority of many online traditional media channels. A second cross brand observation was the relatively low authority of the blogosphere.
These slides only start to delve into understanding talkability and are time consuming to create in comparison to looking at raw mention numbers, but offer superior strategic insight for both earned and paid media approaches for future launches.
I did some broad profiling of online conversations around MWC here.
Where do I start with a book title this inflammatory? I went to the trouble of reading the book twice before starting this review. In the end, the only conclusion I can come to is ‘Policy Faultlines in East Asia’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. Holsag marshals a huge range of facts and opinions within the book. If you want to have a basic understanding of modern Chinese state, the book is a good primer.
He provides insight into the Chinese Communist’s Party’s policy cornerstone of territory maximisation. They were happy to put off their agenda for tactical advantage, but never gave up on their goals. China’s neighbours have similar inflexible policy goals. There is is no win-win solution.
Time has brought increased pressures. A fight for resources to fuel further growth and water rights conflicts. Relative declines in economic growth also fuels nationalistic politics. In China, nationalistic sentiments in citizens grew with prosperity. It has become convenient for politicians to tap into nationalistic sentiments.
Holsag doesn’t attempt to provide a solution for de-escalation of these edges. His book only provides a macro-level understanding of the countries involved. For the reader who wants to understand Asia, Holsag’s book is an excellent primer. More on China’s Coming War With Asia by Jonathan Holsag.
This year Edelman talks about the Grand Illusion, that everyday people will follow the global elites. Income inequality and a growing realisation that the future won’t get better has gradually changed perceptions. It is yet another data point that signals the death of the American Dream and according to Citi the end of Pax Americana.
It is also worthwhile looking at BAV Consulting research on ‘the best countries in the world’ to see how country brand equity are now perceived.
One of the best kept secrets in London is the free sessions put on by the Korean Cultural Centre just off Trafalgar Square. I caught the last film of the year to be shown at the centre. No blood No tears is a Korean heist story. Gyung-Sun is a former safe-cracker who has reformed and become a taxi driver.
Her husband is in the wind and left behind a lot of gambling debts that local loan sharks try to collect on. She doesn’t know where her child is and to cap it all Gyung-Sun has a difficult relationship with the police and her short temper.
A chance car accident brings her into contact with a petty gangsters moll and a plot ensues to rob the dog fighting arena where illegal gambling takes place. What ensues is a film that is part comedy, part Thelma & Louise and a healthy dose of ultra-violence that would be familiar to Hong Kong cinema and Tarantino fans.
Over the next few weeks I will be getting my fix of Korean cinema at the London Korean Film Festival. I can recommend from personal experience:
Fred Wilson talked about the concept of app constellations that he distilled down to:
mobile apps that share a single login and have app to app linking built in
He also added the proviso that ignored gaming apps, which generally purely use integration for identity and payment.
As Wilson points out this level of integration is interesting as one could find a complete suite of apps from the one company and rarely leave that eco-system. This is partly been driven by context:
Putting a lot of features in a mobile application inevitably means burying them resulting in lots of clicks to get at something that you want. So on the design level it is very reminiscent of the design focus that drove the first generation of focused lean web 2.0 applications – though on a philosophical level they are world’s apart since app constellations are about creating a walled garden rather than open transportable data sets (within a walled garden of the mobile operating system).
The idea isn’t necessarily one that’s new. If one looks at someone like Google, this is the very rationale why they built Android – so that there were no blockages to providing it’s services. Microsoft exercised control over the majority of desktop users and could make Google’s life difficult, especially through Internet Explorer, by comparison smartphones were a relatively open space to grow in.
I have attempted to compile a list of some of the the major app constellations. This has taken more time than I would like as I have had to hand code the tables below in order to get the HTML to work properly. Thankfully not having games in the definition of an app constellation made the work a little easier. For instance, Kakao Corp. is responsible for 9 out of the 10 best-selling mobile games in Korea at the moment and keeps churning out new games on a regular basis.
Secondly some of the companies here have more than one app constellation cluster, Tencent’s broadly break down into two clusters; those dominated by QQ and those dominated by WeChat, however there is also a connection between QQ and WeChat. This maybe partly down to the different development centres in China that they both come out of.
Microsoft and Google both have consumer, enterprise user and enterprise administrator app constellation clusters.
Daum is a Korean Internet company famous for its mobile search, news portal and social properties. No self-respecting Korean pop group used to be able to do without a well looked after Daum Cafe account. As I was part way through this Daum has announced that it is merging with Kakao Corp.
Name
English equivalent
What it does
다음, 뉴스, 브라우저, 프로야구
Daum: news, browser, KBO (Korean professional baseball)
It’s a mobile portal of content
mypeople
OTT messenger application that also includes stickers, VoIP and video calls; with support for a number of international languages. It can utilise a common Daum log-in
다음 지도, 길찾기, 지하철, 버스
Daum Maps, Directions, Subway and Bus
A local version of the kind of application Google Maps provides tightly focused on the needs of Korean consumers
다음 사전
Daum Dictionary
Kind of similar to Google Translate and Google Lens. Daum Dictionary allows you to ‘read’ a foreign language using your phones camera, it has a number of translation dictionaries. In addition, it has a flash card function to help Koreans increase their foreign language vocabulary
다음 카페
Daum Cafe
Daum Cafe is a social network with a customisable profile page, a news stream type function called My Cafe, posts and comments – think your Facebook wall or Tumblr account, stickers, a mobile editor and push notifications
다음 클라우드
Daum Cloud
Daum Cloud is similar in functionality to Dropbox and Carousel in terms of being cloud file storage and a way of sharing photos and files. Daum calls out that these can be shared across it’s mypeople social platform, Facebook and Twitter
다음 웹툰
Daum Webtoon (literally the name would be Daum Pick)
Korea like Japan has a comic book culture. The most famous of these is probably Priest which was adapted for film and started Paul Bettany and Maggie Q. The country consumes web comics and Daum Webtoon mobilises that experience. Fans comment on strips, share strips amongst themselves via Daum Webtoon. A western equivalent might be comiXology (a recent Amazon acquisition); but that lacks the social aspects of Webtoon
mysticker for mypeople
Augment photos with various avatar decorations like glasses or facial hair and use these pictures as stickers in OTT messenger app mypeople
SolGroup
SolGroup is a private discussion group for up to 100 members. It allows you to share photos and links as well as doing a broadcast-style notice to group members
해피맘-육아맘 필수앱 (이웃맘 추천, 임신/출산 정보)
Happy Mom
A neighbourhood social network for Mums and Mums-to be. It’s a location-based network that tries to plug women into real-world networks, provide an online support network which can be a source of advice and provide local information. In Seoul there seems to be a consult your GP function. All up this seems to be a much more sophisticated version of Mumsnet
다음 루리웹 블러드 브라더스 공식 커뮤니티
Daum BloodBrothers Community
An application that provides a community for players of Mobage’s BloodBrothers game
WITH
A Flickr or 500px-type application that allows photographs to be organised into albums and easily explored
다음 TV 플레이
Daum TV Play
Allows a smartphone to be used as a remote control where the smart TV has a Daum TV application
다음소셜쇼핑 – 소셜커머스 모음
Daum Social Shopping – social commerce collection
The application features group shopping deals and coupons from a range of players including GroupOn. It also has an Apple Passbook-type function to organise any tickets required to redeem an offer
캠프
Camp
Location-based mobile social network that looks to be around organising group activities; kind of similar in some respects to Foursquare’s Swarm
마이원 모바일 월렛
My One Mobile Wallet
Mobile wallet application that also has some loyalty / rewards programme functionality built-in
마이원 모바일 월렛
Daum Kids
Education app aimed at pre-schoolers, it covers much of the educational ground that Sesame Street may cover in other countries
Kardin
A social business card application. It is a cross between LinkedIn’s CardMunch, Plaxo and LinkedIn
Dropbox
Product name
What it does
Dropbox
Cloud storage
Carousel
Carousel is designed as a single home for all your photos and videos, automatically organized and always with you. It allows for the sharing photos and videos instantly in private conversations. It provides an automatic back up of photos and videos to Dropbox as they are taken.
Mailbox
Alternative mail application specially for iCloud and Gmail users. It offers a simplified user interface and deep app linking across Dropbox products (preventing an OS-level poaching of that functionality)
Facebook – social behemoth has a number of applications out there, half due to acquisitions the company has made
Product name
What it does
Facebook
Replicates much of the desktop experience of using Facebook in a mobile application
Messenger
An OTT messenger that seems to be playing feature catch-up with many of the bigger players. Currently allows groups, video sharing and picture sharing. There are some stickers available and a free VoIP facility
Facebook Page Manager
Mobile application for page admins to manage multiple pages easily from their own phone, even provides a view of Facebook Insights
Instagram
Mobile photo application with built-in filters
Whatsapp Messenger
Popular, relatively unsophisticated OTT messaging application acquired earlier this year
Google
Product name
What it does
YouTube
Native application video player
Google
Native mobile application version of the Google search page, the key difference being the support of voice-enabled search
Google Maps
Native application version of Google’s mapping service. It has voice turn-by-turn directions. It covers 220 countries and the public transport networks of over 15,000 towns and cities
Google Earth
Explore the world virtually, hard to really describe Google Earth – I thought it was telling that it sits in Apple’s travel rather than navigation section
Google Chrome
Alternative web browser, integration with desktop usage of Chrome browser and a reaction to non-Google search deals
Gmail
Dedicated email client for the Gmail email service
Google Translate
Native application interface for Google’s web translation web service
Google+
Native application that provides a simplified interface for the Google+ social network, some elements like Hangouts have been broken out into a dedicated application
Google Drive
Native application that positions Google Drive as more of a cloud storage service than the productivity suite viewpoint that it provides in the desktop experience
YouTube Capture
Shoot and upload video directly to a YouTube account
Hangouts
A me-too OTT messenger with more of a video focus than other players
Chromecast
Application to set up and change administrator-level settings for the Chromecast streaming video dongle
Google Docs
Standalone of the Google Docs word processor experience which is integrated into the desktop version of Google Drive
Google Sheets
Standalone of the Google Docs spreadsheet experience which is integrated into the desktop version of Google Drive
Blogger
Native application to manage a Blogspot blog including creating and posting content
Google Play Books
Google’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle app and Apple’s iBooks
Google Authenticator
A RSA key-type second factor authentication for Google accounts. It has easy set-up with a QRcode and support for multiple accounts
Google Play Music
A mix between the Apple iTunes music player app and Spotify based on Google’s Play content marketplace
Google Play Movies & TV
Native application video player and marketplace for Google Play
Google Currents
Flipboard-esque reader with a focus on mainstream media like The Huffington Post
Photowall for Chromecast
Photowall for Chromecast is an application that lets people take pictures, edit them and collaborate with images on the TV – using phones or tablets. Anyone can take a picture and send it to a Photowall to instantly see it on the big screen.Once the collage is finished a YouTube video of your Photowall is automatically generated
Field Trip
The bastard child of vintage Microsoft Office’s Clippy and a travel guide that surfaces information kind of similar to Foursquare’s exploration function. It will even use voice to deliver it’s random flag ups of interesting things near by. It is also notable for its use of skeuomorphic design in a Google product
Google Adsense
Access to reports and key data from a Google advertising account over a mobile phone
Zagat
Restaurant guide that Google acquired a number of years ago. In many respects Yelp before the internet. Now as a native mobile application
Google Admin
Native mobile application providing an interface for sysadmins to manage enterprise usage of Google products – setting new email accounts up, shutting them down etc.
Google Coordinate
Mobile application of a workforce management tool attached to Google enterprise account – ideal if you had a firm of plumbers, roofing contractors etc.
Helpouts
Native application to get live video advice on a given subject matter.
Kakao Corp. is an OTT messaging application that has a higher user base than Facebook in Korea. It has a lot of hallyu content on there, stickers, in application payments and paid for enterprise accounts. Tencent, makers of WeChat have a stake in Kakao
Name
English equivalent
What it does
KakaoTalk messenger
An OTT messenger with text, stickers, VoIP and a pitch shifter to make your voice sound cuter or play around with friends
KakaoStory
A photo social network that is complementary to KakaoTalk. Think the moments function in WeChat or status updates on Facebook
KakaoGroup
Extends beyond the chat room environment of KakaoTalk to private private group chat as a separate application
카카오아지트
KakaoAgit (a better translation might be KakaoHideout)
Private group discussion and collaboration – sharing ideas or organising an event. Kakao Corp. promotes this particularly to self-organising groups of colleagues in a workplace
카카오 아지트 파트너 앱
Agit Partner
Seems to be a group administrator tool of some sort
KakaoPlace
Very similar to the recommendations functionality of Foursquare and the old Dopplr application
LINE (Naver Japan) – the Japanese subsidiary of Korean online media business Naver Corp. has a range of international and localised products for the Japanese marketplace
Name
English equivalent
What it does
LINE Messenger
An OTT messaging application that has made a good business out of virtual stickers, popular throughout much of Asia from Taiwan to Thailand. It has been fighting a pitched battle for marketshare with WhatsAppk, WeChat, and KakaoTalk
LINE camera
A photo app that integrates with LINE Messenger. It allows filters and affects to be used on pictures including a beauty filter effect. There are over 1,000 stamp effects that allow you to frame your picture, photo editing including a lasso-type function
LINE Brush and Brush lite
An application similar to MacPaint of old but in a mobile device
LINE PLAY
A social network that allows the user to build an avatar as an alter ego with the emphasis on cute and chat with other users
LINE Card
Personalised e-card creator
pick
A photography based social network similar to the social aspects of flickr
LINE Tools
A mix of productivity features: conversation tables, flash light, sound meter and calculator
Ndrive
Cloud storage similar to Dropbox
Naver Translate
Translation software focused on Japanese speakers in partnership with Japanese dictionary publisher Kodensha
Naver Matome Reader
Mobile magazine type application similar to the likes of Flipboard. Not quite a newsreader
無料 マンガ
Webtoons
Mobile comic reader rather like Daum’s Webtoon application. Naver Japan has also published the more popular comics as standalone applications
Kstyle
Korean entertainment news magazine capitalising on the success of Korean pop music in particular in Japan. It also has some coverage of other hallyu content such as Korean dramas
LINE List
Seems to be similar to KakaoGroup or the circles functionality in Google+. It pulls in contacts across social networks including LINE, KakaoTalk and Facebook
Microsoft
Product name
What it does
XBox XBox One SmartGlass
A companion application to the game console: it acts as a remote control for the media play side of the console and facilitates off-console social interaction with game mates
OneDrive
The cloud storage service formerly known as Sky Drive, the application comes in both consumer and business versions.
Photosynth
An application that creates panoramic views from a series of pictures that are stitched together. It also allows for these pictures to be shared with others online
Microsoft Office Mobile
The traditional office suite of Word, PowerPoint and Excel for mobile devices. An Office 365 subscription is required
OWA for iPhone
Native application version of Outlook Web Access that requires an Office 365 subscription
Microsoft OneNote
Native application version of Microsoft OneNote, available as a free standalone application
Microsoft Remote Desktop
Connect to and work on a remote Windows PC
bing search
Native application with a number of bing services including bookmarks, maps and the search engine
Lync for iPhone
Available in 2010 and 2013 editions Lync allows in-enterprise OTT messaging and web conferencing. Requires a licence for a Lync server
Office 365 admin
Manage functions such as setting up a new email account from an iPhone
Xbox Music
Spotify-style streaming application
Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iPad
Microsoft separates out these apps on the iPad so each one has to be downloaded separately rather than getting one Office app bundle. An Office 365 subscription is required
Bing get me there
Bing maps application specifically for London that incorporates live data on the Tube from TfL
SharePoint Newsfeed
A newsreader specifically designed for company SharePoint sites
Microsoft Dynamics CRM for iPhone
Native application for Microsoft’s CRM application
Microsoft Dynamics CRM for iPhone and Dynamics AX
Native application for Microsoft’s CRM application. Dynamics AX allows for expenses to be filed and time sheets to be completed
HealthVault
Patient access to their own and their families health records
My Apps
Single sign-on to Azure cloud applications
Windows Intune Company Store
Enterprise mobile and table app store
Socl
Somewhere between Tumblr and Behance as visual content driven social networks
Microsoft Tech Companion for iPhone
News application for Microsoft developers and certified professionals
RMS Sharing
Allows the user to see rights restricted content when used with an Office 365 licence
Naver: LINE’s Korean parent is a large online media in its own right. Naver powers the majority of searches in Korea and has prominent blogging and mapping platforms.
Name
English equivalent
What it does
NAVER
Native app version of the famous Korean search engine and web portal. It is particularly interesting the way Naver collates stories of interest to the reader. Koreans can subscribe to areas of interest and have the content delivered to them
네이버 지도
NAVER Maps
Similar to Google Maps; the key differences being the focus on Korea and access to real time transport data. Naver also looks to cater to cyclists in major cities more than Google does with its mapping application
me2day
A social network / blogging platform
네이버 웹툰
NAVER Webtoons
Web comic reader application
네이버 블로그
NAVER Blog
Mobile app that allows blog management and creation of posts on Korea’s most popular blogging platform. Blogs in Korea are bigger than in the UK by a considerable margin
네이버사전
NAVER Dictionary
Korean language dictionary and also Korean to 16 other languages dictionary to aid in foreign language usage
네이버 북스
NAVER Books
Korean answer to the Amazon Kindle app
네이버 메일
NAVER Mail
Dedicated email client for the Naver Mail service. Special features include messenger style stickers and deep integration with NDrive cloud storage for file transfers
네이버 뮤직
NAVER Music
A Spotify-esque music client with some special features. It can play your own MP3s directly from the NDrive cloud storage service and synchs with whatever content you have bought on your PC without having to side load the content with a cable
NAVER Camera
Camera application that allows in-app editing of pictures and automatic synching to the NDrive cloud service
네이버 웍스 캘린더
NAVER Works Calendar
Enterprise version of Naver Calendar which supports multiple languages and time zones
네이버 웍스 드라이브
NAVER Works Drive
Enterprise version of Naver cloud storage service, which seems to operate similar to YouSendIt
네이버 웍스 메일
NAVER Works Mail
Enterprise version of Naver email service with a dedicated client
네이버 웍스 주소록
NAVER Works Contacts
Enterprise version of Naver address book with a dedicated client
그린팩토리
NHN greenfactory
NAVER corporate group mobile app with some intranet and stored currency functionality for employees
네이버 글로벌회화 영중일
NAVER Global Phrase Book (plus paid for version as well)
Phrase book supporting English, Chinese and Japanese for Korean speakers
네이버포스트 – 신개념 모바일 스토리북
NAVER Post-New Concept Mobile Story Book
Encourages users to write stories optimised for mobile usage. It allows the stories to be shared across LINE and KakaoTalk and see where connections are on NAVER Maps in a similar kind of way to Google Latitude or Foursquare’s Swarm
네이버 지식iN
NAVER Knowledge iN
Mobile client that provides a way to ask and answer questions in a Yahoo! Answers type of service
쥬니어 네이버
NAVER Junior Naver
Mobile app that provides a Yahooligans! type experience including games and video content
쥬니어 네이버
NAVER Calendar
Dedicated calendar application based on NAVER’s consumer-orientated calendar service
네이버 중한사전
NAVER Chinese-Korean Dictionary
The name tells you everything you need to know
네이버 메모
NAVER Memo
Similar to the Notes functionality that is a core part of iCloud, on the Mac and as part of iOS
네이버 TV
NAVER TV
Streaming TV and movies application
네이버 N드라이브
NAVER N Drive
Mobile application providing cloud storage access, the smart thing with NDrive is the deep integration with other NAVER services like NAVER Music
네이버 주소록
NAVER Contacts
Contact book app service similar to Apple’s address book app which manifests on iCloud and in system default apps in iOS and OSX
Netease is a Chinese online media company most associated with online gaming. It’s 163.com forum is enormously influential for technology loving Chinese.
Name
English equivalent
What it does
网易新闻
NetEase News
A news client that pulls from a wide range of content from sports to shopping and everything in between
有道 词典 本地 增强 版
Youdao Dictionary Professional Edition
Chinese English dictionary with an installed user base over 150 million. The app won a prize in 2011 from Apple for the app. The app integrates with Tencent’s messenger service QQ
网易公开课
NetEase Open Class
Chinese English dictionary with an installed user base over 150 million. The app won a prize in 2011 from Apple for the app. The app integrates with Tencent’s messenger service QQ
网易云阅读-杂志新闻书籍
NetEase cloud reading – Magazine News Books
Analogous to the Kindle app with 100,000+ books, 3000+ top magazine, ‘massive’ internet information and an ‘exquisite’ picture album. The app also allows the user to subscribe to friends microblogging, blog, QQ space and other social platforms
网易应用中心
Netease Application Center
Focuses mostly on games
有道翻译官
Youdao Translator
Translates eight languages into Chinese, you can use the camera to ‘read’ foreign text
网易轻博客
LOFTER
Mobile client for a light blogging platform more like Dayre.me than Tumblr
网易轻博客
NetEase fashion magazine
An e-magazine that allow you to purchase new editions in-application from with Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, British and American fashion magazines
网易博客
NetEase blog
Mobile application to create and publish blog posts on the Netease platform
网易将军令
NetEase General Order
A two-factor authentication app similar to an RSA tag
饭饭
Jenna
A personalised restaurant and dish recommendation service
游戏精灵-你的游戏伴侣
Game Wizard
A mobile gaming magazine with reviews, tips and hacks
网易房产榜- 看网易房产榜,知楼市冷暖
NetEase property list
Allows the user to see property sales or rental prices as well as background information on the area in terms of the amenities in the locality
网易即时通2013
Netease Messenger 2013
A self-described ‘enterprise class’ instant messenger platform that supports Windows, Mac and iOS
Vemento
Allows you to shoot one-second videos similar to Vine, but stitches them together into a bigger, longer film. It has a very flat design and colour scheme that mirrors iOS7
口袋篮球
Pocket Basketball
CBA basketball news, statistics, player profiles and game schedules
网易印像拍
NetEase Photo Album
It is like Istagram and iPhoto blended into one an includes printing services
iEase Translator Pro
Youdao Translator version complete with OCR technology designed for English speakers
惠惠折扣日报—网易出品电商折扣精选（惠惠购物助手手机版）
Huihui discount Daily
Mobile coupon / group buying application
网易联系人助手
NetEase Contact Assistant
Syncing contacts from NetEase mail in a simple address book type application
网易家居杂志 易品家
EaseHome
Home and lifestyle mobile magazine compiled from the home section of the NetEase website
网易汽车
NetEase Car News
Car mobile magazine compiled from the autos section of the NetEase website
网易邮箱- 网易官方手机邮箱
NetEase official mobile email
Dedicated email client
网易电视指南-看直播,刷微博
NetEase TV Guide
Live mobile TV programming
网易电视指南-看直播,刷微博
iStyle
Fashion-orientated community mobile app
网易微博(官方)
NetEase Weibo client
Micro-blogging platform in the shadow of Tencent and Sino versions of Weibo
花田-免费聊天，交友，婚恋
Hanada
A free dating community that includes chat functionality
网易云相册- 相片备份专家
NetEase cloud album
Cloud photo album
Tencent has two of the dominant social platforms in China: QQ and WeChat. It is also big in online games publishing and e-commerce. QQ and WeChat both have their own app constellations
Name
English equivalent
What it does
微生活POS
Micro Life POS
Mobile point of sale terminal application
腾讯彩票
Tencent Lottery
Lottery news including winning numbers
微客多门店版
Tencent Shopping Guide
help traditional retailers store employees to use mobile phones to provide customers with a shopping guide
搜搜问问
SoSo Ask
a knowledge search type mobile application think Yahoo! Answers meets Quora and has integration with Tencent Weibo
Goal精彩中超
Goal!
Latest match results, player details and football league positions from the CSL (Chinese Soccer League)
看房
Showings
Mobile application to aid Chinese house hunters covering most of the major cities in China
QQ团购
QQ Buy
Closely linked to QQ messenger allows for shopping and use of discount coupons
企业QQ
QQ Enterprise version
Business version of QQ instant messenger
QQ便民
QQ convenience
Payment handling app covering pre-paid cards, monthly subscriptions and virtual currency balance – presumably for their games portfolio as well as real-world payments
腾讯路宝
Tencent Lob
Google Maps-like turn-by-turn directions with Waze-like traffic information
腾讯路宝
QQ watch the show
Mobile application with Ticketmaster-type features
QQ网购
QQ Online Shopping
Mobile application of a desktop online shopping site, think an online shopping mall, though much less of an audience than Tmall
腾讯微漫
Tencent Micro-Comic
Mobile comic reading platform, with free to read content including Naruto and Dragonball Z
腾讯充值
Tencent Recharge
Especially designed to manage a Q coin virtual currency account used in paying for games and monthly subscription services
Ps Play
Allows images from PhotoShop to be transferred easily to a phone and friends, can do a screen cast of how an effect was done as a walkthrough. Probably handy for sharing memes
Storycam for WeChat
A kind of Instagram companion app for the WeChat OTT messenger – mixes photo frame type effects with an ability to tell people more about the picture
创意相机
Creative Camera
Allows users to edit pictures often for comedic value or giving them a cute look and then share via the QQ messenger service
wyFire
Easy sharing of pictures over a local network: wi-fi connected device to wi-fi connected device
wyFire
Easy sharing of pictures over a local network: wi-fi connected device to wi-fi connected device
腾讯爱看
Tencent Watch
Summarizes and presents content so that the reader no longer ‘reads’ it but watches it
QQ美食
QQ Cuisine
It has location based elements similar to Foursquare and discount coupon offers and ability to share location on Tencent Weibo
QQ财付通（腾讯出品
QQ Tenpay
PayPal like peer to peer payments attached to a QQ messenger ID
Pitu
Picture beautification – to make women’s skin look younger or better
自选股
Zishuagu
Real time stock price information from Shanghai, Hong Kong and US stock markets
QQ提醒
QQ alert
An alarm clock with lost of different settings and alerts
腾讯看比赛
Tencent watch the game
Sports news from Chinese and international leagues
SOSO慧眼
SOSO Eye
Price comparison application, it scans bar codes and QRCodes but also uses image recognition to find matching book covers etc
QQ电影票
QQ Movie
Mobile cinema ticket booking app
One Browser
Alternative to the built in phone web browser for international audiences
QQ Browser
Alternative to the built in phone web browser for Chinese, Taiwanese and international audiences
腾讯地图
Tencent Map
Car and public transport navigation with turn-by-turn directions
腾讯朋友
Tencent friend
China’s first ‘real name’ social network rather like Facebook in that respect
Qpik
International version of picture beautification app Pitu
WeChat Voice
Companion app to WeChat. Speak into the app, pick an avatar which has an animated mouth that lip-synches the message and send to contacts
微视-8秒短视频分享
Microscopic
Vine-like service that shoots 8-second videos
QQ阅读
QQ Reading
Multi-format e-book reader supporting formats like epub and PDF
QQ通讯录-最快最智能的通讯录
QQ Contacts
An address book based around the QQ messaging eco-system
QQ安全中心
QQ Security Centre
Helps with securing details, binding the phone identity to a particular QQ account, protects game settings and other
My Cam
Camera application that has HDR capabilities and Instagram-type filters
腾讯手机管家（原QQ手机管家
Tencent mobile butler
A utility app which helps enhance Wi-Fi security, measure download speed and other features
We Sync
iCloud-like back-up of address book, it helps users to move from an old phone to their new phone. It also allows the address book to be easily erased from a phone. It seems to be aimed at an international audience
QQ邮箱
QQ Mailbox
Dedicated email client similar to Gmail
QQ
Instant messaging client that comes in both domestic market and international versions
腾讯微云
Weiyun
Dropbox-like cloud service
Qzone
A Facebook-like social network allowing check-ins, status, video sharing, picture sharing
腾讯新闻
Tencent News
A news reader application – think mobile portal as app
微信
WeChat / Weixin
One of the world’s leading OTT messenger made in both domestic and international versions. It has features (some of which where borrowed from QQ) and is nipping at the heels of Whatsapp in a number of markets
BusinessInsider published an interesting article about Samsung, the Tizen mobile operating system and Apple. Some of the assertions in the article looked over certain facts about Tizen.
What is Tizen?
Tizen is a mobile operating system based on Linux, in this respect it shares common ground with Firefox OS, Ubuntu for smartphones and Google’s Android operating system. It has gone through a number of iterations to become what it is today. Tizen can trace its development back to Intel and Nokia’s separate efforts to develop a next generation Linux-based mobile operating system. Both companies had put their weight behind WiMax rather than LTE for fourth generation mobile networks so merging their offerings into one distribution could help move things along. The merged product became Meego. Samsung merged their LiMo mobile Linux effort with Meego to create Tizen. Tizen also gained components from Samsung’s Bada operating system.
BusinessInsider assumes that Tizen is a Samsung thing
Whilst Samsung is the lead in Tizen, and has some of the technology wrapped in onerous licences, Tizen has attracted support from other vendors. The Tizen Association includes Fujitsu and Huawei as rival vendors. Huawei is one of the largest Chinese mobile phone vendors, so competition for Samsung at the low and mid-range of it’s market.
Tizen is a premium product
Tizen could be a premium product and it could be a source of differentiation based on the user experience and performance of the software with the hardware. At the moment however it may not look that way, Tizen on phones looks suspiciously like Android on a Samsung phone. Which is interesting given that a number of Samsung challengers like HTC, Huawei and Oppo are pushing the user experience differentiation further with varying degrees of success
Secondly, the code merged in from the Bada framework was not designed for premium handsets, however you could argue that it would perform better since it was leaner on high performance devices.
What I think is more interesting about Tizen is its apparent husbanding of computing resources; the Samsung Gear 2 watch has a battery life that is reported twice to three times as long as the original Samsung Galaxy Gear. Given the size of the device, an appreciable amount of this change must be due to optimisation work that Samsung did on the Tizen operating system running on the Gear 2 compared to what it had to work with in Android on the Galaxy Gear.
As Steve Jobs said back in 2005 when discussing Apple’s move from PowerPC to Intel processors, computing was moving from performance improvements to a more nuanced performance per Watt improvements. Battery technology, in particular power density and improved battery formulations does not move at a particularly fast pace in comparison to say microprocessor design, solid state or disk storage and display design. This is the reason why Google Glass has a battery life that allows roughly 45 minutes of continuous usage.
You husband power in the product through taking a holistic approach to engineering power-saving in both the software and the hardware; it involves tight integration and control over both factors. Tizen gives Samsung more of this control than it currently enjoys with Android. This control could also help Samsung harden the security of phones for the enterprise, however Tizen isn’t unique in this regard and the defence industry has decided to go down the route of securing Android itself; a great example of this is Boeing’s Black Phone
Tizen and Google
As margins become tighter on handset manufacturers Google looks like it is likely to make more money from Android users than they will. It is the reason why both Apple and Xiaomi have a combined services and hardware sales model so that they gain from the lifetime of the consumer usage rather than just the device sale. Secondly Google is being seen as increasingly using its monopolistic power against handset manufacturers in tactics that look reminiscent of the relationship between PC manufacturers and Microsoft.
In order for Samsung to break from Google it would need to build or integrate various services; just a few years ago Samsung was considered to have the whip hand in its relationship with Google over the Android operating system and the purchase of Motorola was partly seen as a hedge against this power.
BusinessInsider suggested that Google’s sale of Motorola’s handset business to Lenovo could be read as a perception that Google feels it no longer needs that hedge and that Samsung couldn’t build services that would threaten Google. Samsung don’t seem to have achieved this so far, but that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t do it in the future.
Tizen is interesting, particularly Samsung’s mastery of power management, Samsung also possesses deep pockets, for instance it could buy Jolla outright and gain a better looking operating system whilst still retaining Tizen’s compatibility with Android applications. Tizen isn’t a mobile only operating system but could be extended into Samsung’s brown and white goods product ranges and the new product categories opening up around the ‘web of no web’ from wearables to smarter out-of-home and retail marketing.
I had been interested in Namyang Dairy Products as I heard that they had done some interesting work raising brand awareness of their products amongst consumers using social gaming on Kakao Talk. I looked into it and it was actually a competitor. What I didn’t realise at the time was more of the back story to Namyang Dairy Products.
The company was exposed for using aggressive sales techniques with its channel partners. A middle-aged distributor made a recording of a younger Namyang Dairy Product salesman swearing at him and threatening him. This recording then went viral on the internet.
Six million Koreans said that they would boycott the brand, Namyang apologised and proposed in ways that they could make good to their distributors. The protests went on.
The Korean government which is looking to democratise entrepreneurship in the face of a chaebol-dominated economy used the opportunity to start the process of putting in place legislation that will balance the power relationships in business dealings and legislate on the bounds of appropriate behaviour. In this case Namyang made an easier target than the chaebol and allowed the government to get the legislation past the resistance of the Federation of Korean Industry
An interesting campaign for Samsung Life Insurance that turned a corporate sponsorship of a public black spot for suicides.
Whilst the campaign looks to have done very well in terms of talkability, it would be interesting to see how the client thought about, and measured return on investment.
The video is on YouTube so may not be available in all areas.
