Some notes about making posts

Hello everyone,
Here are some notes for making posts.

1. Don't forget to label your post for easy access.

2. You can upload your photos and then include them into the post, or simply embed them by using HTML if the photos are online. Other options are using Google Album Archive or URL link.

3. For embedding pictures or Slideshare, change the mode from Compose to HTML, and then put the embed code. When you switch back to Compose mode, you will be able to see how the files are displayed.

Hope these are helpful! Wish you all a Happy Lunar New Year!
Don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions!

Best,
Ting

Short Essay - What Makes Freemium Succeed? by XU Shuai (Kevin) 1155081710

What Makes Freemium Succeed?

XU Shuai (Kevin), 1155081710

Picture: 《陰陽師》(Onmyoji), a popular smart phone game by Netease

Freemium is a business model that works by offering a basic product or service free of charge while charging a premium for advanced features, functionality, or related products and services. Fred Wilson, the one who first raised this concept, gave examples such as Skype, Flickr、Trillian、Newsgator、http://Box.net、Webroot, etc. These softwares/websites all have a free basic version and a ‘professional’ version with advanced functions and charging.

One typical Freemium model in China is QQ. Founded by Tencent, QQ is originally a chatting software with free functions such as chatting, grouping, file transmitting, voice/video call, QQ charges for ‘VIP privilege’ for users to buy QQ show, decorate QQ space, have personalized ‘online outfit’ etc. Also, many derived products of QQ also runs in Freemium model. In your teenage, have you ever paid for purposes to ‘lighten icons for your QQ account’ to show off to your buddies? Have you ever bought ‘green-diamond’ VIP to enable your QQ space to have the music-playing function? Can you raise your QQ pet without paying any money to keep it alive?

                    

Picture: Game QQ Pet (left) and QQ Show in chatting window (right)

Being attracted (or sometimes trapped) by these Freemuim products, have you think of why these products can take out money from your pocket, even if you can use it for free?

Outstanding Product

The success of Freemium model is based on its outstanding product which caters for a certain group of users, in other word, a certain market. The ‘free’ can make the product draw new users in a fast and low-cost way, which also builds up a barrier for other competitors. Furthermore, with the scale increasing, the costs for operating for acquiring new users decrease and finally, a small group of people within these users become ‘premium’ users with their further demand. Those users who don’t want to pay money or get expired from ‘free trial’ can experience premium service by inviting new users, which also help expand basic users for the product. (also there are other ways for them to get premium such as watching commercials or downloading other recommended software, which also generates profit for the product) 

Interacting and Sharing

The motivation for Freemium products to expand their basic users rapidly is that they are usually software of high levels of interacting. For users, the more people using these products, the more value they have. Almost all the people chat with Wechat instead of phone call because its convenient and free. So people are happy that more users join in the ‘team’ and the may even recommend these software to friends to make more ‘free’ interaction. Similarly, in business, for Dropbox/Goole drive, besides sync stuffs you can also use them to share documents with fellows and that will greatly improve the efficiency. To some extent, you are ‘expecting’ others to use it because this will make your life easy and convenient.

Future – Challenge and Opportunities

What will Freemium be in the future? In my opinion, the most challenge the Freemium model facing is the protection of online copyright and original content. Think you are CTO of Spotify, and there are tons of small websites that send a person to pay your Premium and ‘steal’ your privileged contents for users and then sell them on their websites. How can you manage a way/system that can prevent this crazy duplication of these valuable original contents?

However, there is still a huge potential market in Freemium model, for example, mobile games. Just like the picture on the top of this article, players can of course play《陰陽師》(Onmyoji) for free, but for those players who want to be strong and dominating in their region, they will definitely pay for different ‘Premium’ services and equipments in the game, as long as these services are attractive enough.

References:

Seufert, E. B. (2013). Freemium economics: Leveraging analytics and user segmentation to drive revenue. Elsevier.

Pujol, N. (2010). Freemium: attributes of an emerging business model.

NetEase Game Page: http://yys.163.com/

Posted by XU Shuai (Kevin), 1155081710

on Jan 25, 2017

Group List

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yuFVlEPwsawkIDE7O0lcF9u6xBj3XAuNjSZPPLoguu0/edit?usp=sharing

Short Essay: A Case Study of the China Mobile Game Industry

A Case Study of the China Mobile Game Industry

        The current China mobile game industry has demonstrated characteristics of an oligopoly market. Having seen a huge surge in revenue of mobile games in the past years, many game companies are trying to get in this profitable realm. As the industry became mature, the market structure was stabilized. According to the Q3 industry report released by iiMedia Research (2016), the third quarter’s total revenue of the China mobile game industry is 19.23 billion RMB, among which 51.5% were generated by Tencent and 20.8% belonged to Netease. These two giants together were accounted for 72.3% of the market share. None of the rest of the competitors in the industry held more than 5% of the market share solely.

        The capital and resources are mainly concentrated in the hands of Tencent and Netease, which poses high entry barriers for new entrants. Many people argue that the China mobile game market is showing the Matthew effect, that the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. However, by applying the long tail theory, we can still be optimistic that opportunities for new entrants and small companies are out there. Given the fact that mainstream products (e.g. MMORPG, Cards, MOBA Games) are dominated by the big two, possible solutions for small companies include focusing on the niche markets. For instance, exploring the anime culture (二次元), sports related and female targeting games. Small businesses will need to differentiate themselves with high-quality games and reach their targeting users more efficiently by utilizing social media, word-of-mouth, App Store’s recommendation and so on.

        As for the big companies like Tencent, it has engaged in various forms of strategic alliances to enhance its competitiveness. In June 2016, Tencent acquired 84.3% of a Finnish game maker Supercell for $8.6 billion. Supercell is reputable for developing the world’s top grossing mobile games including Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. This was the biggest overseas acquisition in Tencent’s history, but not the first one. Tencent made a successful move of acquiring Riot in 2015, the game developer of League of Legends (LOL). Now, LOL has become one of the most popular PC eSports game in China. Tencent has also created a mobile game King of Glory by imitating the design of LOL, which remains a huge hit ever since its release and now it ranked the top 1 on Apple App Store’s best-selling list (China).

        The success of Tencent mobile games follows the principle of Metcalfe’s effect (Network effect). Tencent has integrated the game production with its distribution stage. Mobile games developed or franchised by Tencent will be released on its two major social media platforms, QQ and WeChat. As shown on the financial report of Tencent (2016), QQ has monthly active users (MAU) of 877 million and WeChat has MAU of 846 million. Distribution through these two channels means exposure to the enormous user base, which brings in large traffic to the games. Additionally, because almost every mobile game has social features, more people playing it, more enjoyable the gamers will feel. The increase of a game’s popularity creates a sense of belonging and fulfillment for gamers, which in return attracted new gamers and improved their loyalty, and vice versa. Thus, with the powerful distribution channels across WeChat and QQ, Tencent is confident to monetize its own games.

References:

iiMedia Research, 2016, The Q3 Report of China Mobile Game Industry. Retrieved from http://www.iimedia.cn/47122.html.

Tencent, 2016, 2016 Interim Report. Retrieved from https://www.tencent.com/en-us/articles/1700291473387603.pdf
- - by Shiran Jiang, 1155084678

Week 2 Discussion (•̀ω•́)✧

–Supply and Demand curves (•̀ω•́)✧
Example: Huawei
The developing history of Huawei is also a process of pursuing brand premium. The newly released Huawei Mate9 has surpassed Apple and Samsung in price. Since 2013, Huawei has been taking the high-end road of development. Thus, it is difficult to find any low-end products of Huawei, with the price of all its products gradually rising up to above 3, 000 RMB. Compared to most of the mobile brands, the price of Huawei is much more expensive. However, inconsistent with the supply and demand curves, the sales volume of Mate9 had exceeded 100 million within 10 seconds after its release. As a technology-oriented company, Huawei terminal utilizes its high technology to produce brand premium. In addition, the price of its products is cheaper in China than in other countries, which cultivates popularity in its domestic market. Therefore, in recent years, even Huawei’s price has been higher and higher, its sales volume is also growing continually.


–The world is flat (•̀ω•́)✧
Example：America Airlines
America Airlines used to having its customer service outsourcing to India professional companies, especially some work like answering the hotline despite the call is from anywhere around the world, it will automatically transfer to India's outsourced.

–Moore’s Law (•̀ω•́)✧
Example：the old Nokia VS. today's smart phone
In thirty years, the storage of cellphones extended for hundred of times.

–Metcalfe’s Law (•̀ω•́)✧
Example：Linkedin
Being the the largest business and employment-oriented social networking website, Linkedin aims to build a professional network by letting users to maintain contacts and build connections with people they know and trust in the business world. Users are allowed to invite people they know to become a part of the "connections". Linkedin is the perfect example of network effect in Metcalfe's law as the system works better when more people become a part of the connections.      

–The long tail (•̀ω•́)✧
Example：JD Daojia
JD.com started as a B2C online retailer, then JD launched a new O2O life service called "JD Daojia" based on the advantage of its logistics management, which was not the mainstream in its system. With the promtion of "Internet Plus" era and O2O system, JD Daojia has rapidly developed in a short period.

–Freemium (•̀ω•́)✧
Example: VPN apps
Users in mainland China must download VPN apps/softwares such as Green VPN, 东风VPN to get access to websites like Youtube, Twitter. Those VPN apps mostly run in a freemium way. Users can first have a ‘free-trial’ for certain MB and after that they will be request to ‘update to premium account’ which has multi-lines and unlimited data flow. If they don’t buy the Premium account, they will have to watch advertisement or download other recommended apps to add their data flow.


Future trend: (•̀ω•́)✧
IOT will be widely used in many areas.
The world will become more flat, a single product's producing technologies shall be divided into serval parts and conducted by different countries.

Artificial Intelligence would replace most of the work of human being.                        

Everyone would have a profile that combine both  professional and social part of their life. Due to the powerful network connections, people can get touch with whoever they want to know. There will be no boundaries between CEOs and regular workers. Those who want a job may just send a link to the manager who need a employee, and the system will examine the matching degree bewteen the jobseeker and the position. That way the demand will highly meets the supply.

O2O will become the main marketing trend.

In the future, more and more companies will get into this market, and the market will become a monopolistic competition where every kind of VPN apps need to diffenenciate themselves to survive. These VPN apps will be different focused function. (e.g. countries, speed, etc.)
For the customer: They will have different choices for different purposes (e.g. videos, games, business) and also they will pay cheaper price for the service.

Group Members:
_(•̀ω•́ 」∠)_

Feng, Yuan (1155081930)
Gao, Ye (1155082077)
Luo, Zhaohui (1155084240)
Shi, Tingrui (1155082223)
Wang, Jin (1155088181)
Xu, Shuai (1155081710)

W2 Group Discussion 2

Group Memeber:
ZHANG Wen
XU Xin
Wang Yiqi
Angelene LYU Xiaolin
Deborah QUE Yuen Ying
Jessica WONG Cheuk Yi


#Identify 1 example for each of the following concepts 
–Supply and Demand curves
When new iPhones come out, people are crazy for them so they are sold at very high prices; when iPhones are everywhere, people lose interest in them and the demand go down so the prices go down as well.
–The world is flat
Reuters, as a British media agency, hires employees overseas to report the news instead of send their reporters from UK to do the work.
–Moore’s Law
Smartphone processors and Camera lenses get updated faster and faster nowdays.
–Metcalfe’s Law
For Chinese users, WeChat is a more valuable social platform than RenRen because WeChat has more users.
–The long tail
YouTube has very diversified channels (such as handicraft, bakery...)
–Freemium
The game Angry Birds. At the very fist, players download and play the game for free, but later on some upgraded level need you to  pay money to upgrade yourself.

#What may happen 10 years later? 
The world is even flatter, the tail will be longer, privacy will be a BIG issue, wearable gadgets will be more available, more people will go online, products will become homogenous, paid content will be more popular, mobile payment will be more available, digital natives have higher purchasing power, VR and AR will also become more availble...

Week 2 Group discussion for homework

# Identify 1 example for each of the following concepts

–Supply and Demand curves

From November of last year, egg market in China has witnessed a exceed excess supply period when over 66% eggs have been produced more than the average rate of past years. The recent average weekly price of egg is 2.63/egg, which indicated a decrease of 2.95% than last week. With the approach of Chinese New Year, it is forecasted that the demand of eggs will rise because people will buy more eggs for reunion party on Chinese New Year Eve and during the holidays. The price of eggs may rise as the result.

–The world is flat
The popularization of SNSs, such as Facebook, enables users of different cultural background to exchange information and ideas. The use of SNSs represents the need for promoting information dissemination, and it also allows individual users to participate in information globalization.

–Moore’s Law
 Moore's law was first proposed in transistor field, and still applicative in silicon. Polycrystalline silicon is a kind of new energy to make battery which transfers solar energy.  Monocrystalline silicon was first adapted with a higher transfer rate, but quite high cost. While now polycrystalline silicon has slowly taken its place, with half of the cost, 17%- 18% transfer rate. And these years, the transfer rate is growing with the big step of cost reduction, conforming to Moore's law.

–Metcalfe’s Law

It is known to us that social media depend much on quantity of users. According to statista, Instagram has more than 600 million users by December, 2016. When Instagram has more and more users, it began to delivery advertising based on data analysis of its users. Users can also benefit from follow different kinds of accounts to view photography or creative pictures.

–The long tail
The long tail theory suggests there’s a huge demand for products beyond the high-volume items brick-and-mortar shops can offer, thus Netflix licensed a huge library of content to target niche demand and build its subscriber base. It was able to use this ‘tail’ business to invest original programming, from the Emmy-award-winning House of Cards to a recent Disney deal for four new Marvel shows.

–Freemium  
a notable example is Baidu Netdisk which is one of the most largest cloud service providers in China. Compared with free users who receive services in a limited space, senior members of Baidu Netdisk have access to added features like faster download, 5T storage space, and online uncompressed package. The membership fee is 72 yuan per 3 months or 269 yuan per year.

#What may happen 10 years later?

10 years later, cloud computing service will be more and more powerful which can create a virtual space made up of data. People can control their consciousness in the virtual space. People can achieve a lots of things such as watching movies when you're "sleeping".

Weiting WANG 1155081820

Wuyi DENG 1155089216

Kejin WU 1155081995

Yibing SHEN 1155081938

Jingfan ZHAO 1155081873

Ziyi Gao 1155080948

Week 2 Discussion

1. Supply and demand curves: 


Supply of free news online is increased, people becomes unwilling to pay for subscription fee.

2. The world is flat
:

Facebook enables users to connect with others all over world.

3. moore’s law: 


Availability of gmail storage space increases over years.

4. metcalfe’s law:


Instagram users connect with each others.

5. the long tail:


Pet-Sitting service is not common but there is a demand for it. Service provider can make a website and people can search for it online when they need it. 

6. freemium: 


Apple Music, Netflix, iCloud

What may happen 10 years later.

Smartphone will dominate the technology market.

Personalised service would be more common with more comprehensive data base.

The in-store retails will shrink and be replaced by online shops.

Group members:

Chan Nga Yan, Hazel 1155081733

Liu Tung Mei, Cynthia 1006601593

Poon Lok Yi Joyce 1155082158

Week 2 Discussion 2

–Supply and Demand curves 

3D printing was an expensive technology before as not many companies could replicate that technology. However, as more are able to produce 3D printers nowadays, it becomes more affordable that amateurs can own one.

–The world is flat

Yun Computing Service is the best example which have come out in recent years and gradually get popular both for individual and enterprises. With this service, everyone can upload own data and download others' data from the internet and finally realize the information sharing which will lead to the globalization to some extent. 

 –Moore’s Law 

The CPU of MAC is updating the iteration with the times, from Power PC G3 to Power PC G5. The performance is getting better and better, and the running speed is doubled. With the certain expense, the value of CPU is greater by the renewal.

–Metcalfe’s Law 

LinkedIn provides a social platform for professionals to get in touch with each other across the world. If there are just one or two users of LinkedIn, it is of no or little value because the circle is too small. With more users, they can expand their social network. It adds to the function and value of the site. 

–The long tail

The folk music was not the mainstream music in the Chinese market, and was only shared and spread among a certain group of people, who are always the minority. However, the Xiami Music discovered this niche market. They strongly promote these folk singers, providing image designing and branding for folk music, and gradually form a new booming market. Nowadays, folk music has more and more fans, and in turn gives the Xiami Music very considerable profits.  

–Freemium

Adobe series software such as photoshop, premiere, indesign etc. will give you 30 days to try the products after which you have to pay for it. Another example is that SPSS which actually will not provide you the complete functions if you do not pay for it.

What may happen ten years later?

Ten years later, there will be big changes in technology field. Specifically，AI, VR and AR, IOT will be three important driving force in our society.

Artificial intelligence technology will be more popularized in people’s daily life, machine learning ability will be improved a lot and used in many fields from chatting bot to fraud detection, even to stock-market analysis, elderly care. 

Another trend is a more advanced digital world. VR and AR can be combined to bring more possibility to reality, like more immersive virtual touring experience. The information people received can be more personalized because it’s possible to figure out a person’s complete digital profile by using big data. After ten years, people can play video games supported by VR/AR in their home, and when people  buy things on the internet, they can use VR/AR to get a view of the things.

Besides,  IOT will be a major tendency. Various kinds of physical devices will be wirelessly connected to the Internet of things which can collect and exchange data. For example,  future home automation system will be popular using IOT.  the mechanical, electrical and electronic systems used in our houses will be monitored and controlled by IOT devices. 

Teammates:

LU Yi  (Cathy) 1155082008

WU Yue (Alisa) 1155081703

SONG Shuyi (Susie) 1155081864

YU Jin (Joyce) 1155081945

SIEW Ka Hang (Kara) 1155084669

Discussion 2/ Zhang Xuanting, Chen ye, Sun li, Yu yun, Lun lixin

-Supply and demand curves

The example of the sales of IPHONE6, the demand is so high since there are many app fans in the market while the supply is not enough. Especially the demand in mainland China is already so high but Apple didn’t release IPHONE6 first in mainland China, therefore causing the price of IPHONE6 in the market is higher than the official price because somebody is bidding up the price.

-The world is flat

The example of Facebook.

The technology improvement and the popularize of the Internet enable Facebook to appear and become popular in the world. Therefore, people from all over the world can upload their opinions and exchange their ideas on the Facebook. This platform also gathers people from all over the world, which breaks the geography barriers to some extent. And it provides information to people, which is also helpful to the better understanding of different cultures, promoting the world to become a flat.

-Moore’s Law

It’s so hard to think of the example of the Moore’s law so we start to think that maybe the Moore’s law is not only suitable in the electronic industry but also suitable in some websites or online platforms which provide information.

Like .com

If someone keep answering questions and providing the information on Zhihu.com, he/she will double his/her number of fans and likes in a certain time. For example, if someone is stably active on Zhihu.com, then his/her likes will be doubled in every 48 days and his/her number of fans will be doubled in every 50 days (just some assumptions). However, this assumption needs to be examined by people over a period.

-Metcalfe’s Law

The example of Weibo, enabling people to create user-generated content, producing interesting content to attract more people. Also, viral advertising and viral content diffusion appears on Weibo, which is also the result of the connection and the interaction between people.

-The long tail theory

The example of VIPSHOP(唯品会),

The VIPSHOP mainly set its market niche as selling the discount products. It focuses on help the brand to deal with some surplus products, using the flash sale to stimulate the buying motivation of people. It focuses on selling discount cheap products instead of selling the new products, which meets the long tail theory. Due to the reason that the fashion merchandising industry always has storage problem, the information can never be got on time to help the store to decide what to sell, which means the surplus product is a very long tail of the fashion merchandising industry and dealing with the surplus products can be a giant market. The VIPSHOP catch this long tail to do its business.

What will happen ten years later.

It has been not long for us to break through the 2D and enter 3D’s world, so ten years later maybe the technology of VR will become popular too. People begin to use VR everywhere, for example the game, the communication tools, and the way of doing business, there will be no need for people to travel around just for business or conference, all the meetings can be done in VR and its vivid. And we may be working on ‘vpp’instead of ‘app’. Also the cinema will provide VR movies like 3D movies in today.

Zhang Xuanting

Yu yun

Lun lixin

Chen ye

Sun li