Jonny Evans, the resident Appleholic at Computerworld, made a case today that Apple would be the primary driver for 5G in North America, despite the fact that a) Apple doesn’t have a 5G device yet, b) several very large competitors do, and c) networks are already rolling out. Granted, his argument makes a kind of intuitive sense. Apple’s US market leadership in handsets suggests that Most of Us will adopt 5G when it shows up in the handset of our choice and that few of us are likely to jump the iOS ship for Android just for a yearlong speed-bump. What is more, I think the issue of Apple being ..read more

The Economist’s Chaguan dove into what was like to be very obviously non-Chineses in China. Full credit to the author and editors, the article is, in my experience, rather gentle.  Setting aside any comparisons with other countries for a moment, this hints at a possible advantage for non-Chinese firms that are staffed by rather more enlightened managers. Cultural chauvinism is a weakness of many up-and-coming Chinese brands.  Know your rival: this is one area where a non-Chinese company that has embraced diversity and multiculturalism has an opportunity to use that culture as a comp ..read more

Yet China is not a market economy and, on its present course, never will be. Instead, it increasingly controls business as an arm of state power. It sees a vast range of industries as strategic. Its “Made in China 2025” plan, for instance, sets out to use subsidies and protection to create world leaders in ten industries, including aviation, tech and energy, which together cover nearly 40% of its manufacturing. Although China has become less blatant about industrial espionage, Western companies still complain of state-sponsored raids on their intellectual property. Meanwhile, foreign busines ..read more

Weekend reading: Matthew Sheehan’s fascinating look at what happened when the freewheeling digital libertarianism of Silicon Valley met the mandarins of Zhongnanhai, and how that is changing the Internet for all of us ..read more

I had the good fortune about seven years ago to have coffee with Jim McGregor, who has spent even more time than I have living and working in China. Over a Starbucks in the then-expat-heavy Beijing suburb of Shunyi we were comparing sources of insight about policy and business, he said something arresting. “You know the reason I like your blog,” he asked. “You never write something just because you feel like you need to write. You only post when you have something to say.” That made me feel better about not being as prolific as other bloggers, and it has, over the past four years, given me muc ..read more

I am starting to get requests from clients to sit down and talk about communications and marketing strategies around the upcoming Olympiads in Tokyo and Beijing, and one, in particular, has asked me a question I get about such events with increasing regularity: how do you deal with ambush marketers? (In the trade, “ambush marketing” is defined as “the practice by which a rival company attempts to associate its products with an event that already has official sponsors.”) I tell them that the best way to respond to an ambush just like an infantry platoon leader would. You expect them, plan for ..read more

During a long February in the United States I was asked by several very well-educated people when I think China will have a recession. It’s nice to be asked, but my opinion on this means a lot less than that of someone like Arthur Kroeber, Nick Lardy, or William Overholt. I’m a businessman, dammit, not an economist. With that disclaimer in place here’s my take. The question is less important than its underlying assumption. There is an expectation that China is headed for a point where the economy will need at least a pause to catch its breath. There is a recession coming, and it will come beca ..read more

Late in March I had an engrossing conversation in Shanghai with a veteran Chinese auto marketer. The subject was the future direction of the industry. The executive told me that the most fascinating development for her was how the cascade of innovations falling into the automotive sector after decades of incremental evolution was drawing so many technology companies into the automotive business. She felt that these new, disruptive players would alter the industry, and that we would watch an inrush of new brands that would swamp the old. I was a bit less sanguine. I grew up in a factory, and I ..read more

Walking the elevated byways of the financial district in Pudong, I sit down for a moment to people-watch. The proposals I need to write will keep. Shanghai and I are having a moment. The passers-by are nearly all young (under 35,) well turned-out but not flashy, and are strolling rather than rushing or shuffling. I catch the snippets of conversation, some in the Shanghai dialect, most in Mandarin. Accents confirm that, whatever similarities in dress, this is not a homogenous group. The daily dwellers of Liujiazui’s office blocks are a high-elevation geographic cross-section of the nation. I t ..read more

Jonny Evans, the resident Appleholic at Computerworld, made a case today that Apple would be the primary driver for 5G in North America, despite the fact that a) Apple doesn’t have a 5G device yet, b) several very large competitors do, and c) networks are already rolling out. Granted, his argument makes a kind of intuitive sense. Apple’s US market leadership in handsets suggests that Most of Us will adopt 5G when it shows up in the handset of our choice and that few of us are likely to jump the iOS ship for Android just for a yearlong speed-bump. What is more, I think the issue of Apple ..read more