Content
- Celebration on the street Ilona Mask
- Not Sony, but Sony Group
- Beauty Index application
- About Russian and foreign goods
- Windows improvements and the battle for Edge
- Conclusion on a sad note
Celebration on the street Ilona Mask
“Shortists” (playing short) of Tesla shares drank a lot of blood to Elon Musk. The confrontation with them cost him millions of dollars and the post of chairman of the board of directors. But now it’s Musk’s time. Tesla’s share price stood at $ 1371 at the close today. A year ago they cost 6 times less.
There is an incessant howl in the ranks of the shorts. They expected a fall at a price of $ 800, then $ 900, and believed that $ 1 would definitely not break through. Tesla shares are obscenely expensive. Much more expensive than they should. To celebrate this deed, Mr. Musk has released short satin shorts with the S000XY lettering (these are the letters denoting the names of the models of the company Tesla S, Tesla 3, etc.). Affordable price – $ 3
Shares are likely to rise further as second-quarter results beat analysts’ results. Tesla delivered 90 thousand cars, which is 4 more than the plan. Bank analysts have recognized Tesla and set a forecast for the stock in the region of $ 000. There are articles in the media that can break through the $ 1 mark.
For all my love for Elon Musk, the price should fall. But, of course, I will not put money on it. For around the Mask there is a field of refraction of reality, which changes the laws of physics and the market.
Not Sony, but Sony Group
At the beginning of May, I was making material about Sony, which ended with the words: “And it may well happen, like with IBM, when, speaking about Sony, everyone will remember set-top boxes, players and phones, but it turns out that for a long time, Sony is sensors, sensors, medical equipment and financial services ”.
Recently, Sony changed its name to Sony Group, which will be used from April 2021. The name change should hint that the company has a wide range of activities, and not just what everyone is used to.
Beauty Index application
First, my personal analyst on social networks of stars discovered an application that allows you to evaluate the “beauty index”, and then a letter from a reader arrived in the mail (thanks for the screenshots).
Say what you like, but love for ratings is ineradicable. We love this business very much, when everything is clearly structured and laid out on the shelves and you don’t have to think yourself. By the way, if you do not take technology fans into account, then most of the reviews of technology are viewed diagonally in an attempt to snatch one single thought: you can take or bullshit. Either better than manufacturer B, or worse. There is another category of readers who have already bought a product, but still continue to read reviews of the purchased device in order to make sure that they made the right choice.
The Beauty Index application could potentially wait for success, given that we are all, in one way or another, notorious and insecure, and women, to whom society imposes increased demands on their appearance, this applies doubly.
The only trouble is that the algorithm is as basic as possible, analyzing only symmetry and proportionality. For example, Roma Belykh is beautiful, proportional and 84% symmetrical. But where can he compete with Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings”. The latter has bigger eyes and a neat nose.
But I guess the purpose of the app is to cheer you up and cheer you up. And with this it does an excellent job. Can you imagine what a scandal would arise if someone got a low result? And so everyone is beautiful and happy! Well, only Sergei Semyonich was not lucky. Not only is the overly strict quarantine being blamed, but now this is also.
About Russian and foreign goods
Not so long ago, the website published an issue of “Sofa Analytics” about “The Conspiracy of Producers against Buyers in Russia”, in which Eldar analyzed the problem of why Russians prefer Western goods and believe that it is better there than here.
All thoughts in the article are good and correct. I highly recommend reading. However, I can’t resist inserting my five kopecks. Eldar writes absolutely correctly that most of the goods are identical, both in our country and in others. Differences can only be due to consumer preferences or legislation. In the East and Asia, Coca-Cola seems sweeter. They love it so much. And Americans really like thick fabric on shirts more. I remember when I had to go to the office in uniform and bought myself Calvin Klein shirts on Amazon. Dense fabric, perfectly holds washing, as they say, there is no drift. And then I decided that you can buy such shirts in Europe, saving on shipping. I was left disappointed.
Sometimes there are different laws that restrict manufacturers. I have encountered this only once. Back in my teens, I somehow got the American version of the most popular acne remedy (I can’t remember the name). Solved my problems once or twice. Bought exactly the same later from us. Not only did it not help, but rather made it worse. It turned out that the composition is different. The active ingredients of the product approved in the USA are prohibited in Russia.
FMCG
However, unfortunately, the world is a little more complicated, and manufacturers take into account not only taste “preferences” and laws. Everything Eldar wrote is true and true for countries with stable economies.
And Russia, unfortunately, is unstable, which is aggravated by an undeveloped industry, when most of the products have to be purchased abroad. I think the most striking and wild example is agriculture. Not everyone knows this fact, but 90% of seeds for vegetables are not domestically produced. Your own cabbage? Grown with us, but bought somewhere there. Here is a link to Kommersant. When I was working as an analyst in the dairy industry, I asked: “Why do we estimate yoghurt caps in prime cost in euro cents?”. Yes, we also buy them abroad.
The picture is similar in all sectors of the economy, so once the ruble falls, everything goes up. But the manufacturer cannot just take and proportionally increase the price, because the buyer from this … [surprised]. Then, honest tricks are used, which, for example, include downsizing, that is, reducing the packaging. And a bottle of 1 kg of milk appears, while it is 970 milliliters of milk.
But there are other dirty tricks as well. Once in St. Petersburg, you will surely hear a rumor about the wonderful Finnish “Fairy” (dishwashing detergent). Like, there really is 1 drop and a bunch of plates. And with us you pour, pour, but washes badly. By the way, the domestic “Fairy” is different in texture. It is thicker. We have it folk. Yogurt to make the spoon stand, “Fairy” to cut off with a knife. I did not go to the laboratory, but there are subjective impressions. I brought it for an experiment in 2005 (even then there was a rumor). Identical to the domestic one. And in 2016, out of curiosity, I bought it in a Finnish goods store near Marata Street. The difference is significant. Our product needs to be poured more. And here the question arises: the ruble has experienced two big falls during this time, not counting inflation, has the price of “Fairy” increased proportionally?
I returned to this topic, since FAS has been in a confrontation with Procter & Gamble, Henkel and Lindt und Sprungli for six months. For example, the examination revealed that “with a comparable washing capacity, the dosage recommended on the packaging of powders made in the Russian Federation for similar washing conditions is 1,5-2 times higher than that recommended on the packaging of powders produced in the European Union.” About chocolate: “In the samples of Lindt chocolate sold in the Russian Federation, the content of 12-14 organic acids differs (according to some samples by 10-50%, in some cases by 100-220% or more) from the samples purchased in Europe.” The FAS Russia department concludes: “At the same time, instructions are placed on the packages of goods of international brands sold in the territory of the Russian Federation, which obviously give the consumer the impression that he is being offered a product identical to the one that is produced and sold under the specified brand in the countries of the European Union (for example , “German quality standard” on Persil powder (RF), “No. 1 in Europe (in sales)” on Ariel powder (RF), emphasis on the country of origin of Swiss chocolate and long production traditions and high reputation of the manufacturer on Lindt chocolate, etc. P.)”.
The manufacturers have not fixed anything, so the FAS is already imposing fines.
Here is the same washing powder. Having some work experience, I can say that the manufacturer never degrades the properties of his product out of a desire to simply cheat the buyer. But at a certain moment a choice arises: either to lift the price up to heaven, having lost demand, or, like everything in the market, to look for options. The most affected are products whose ingredients, packaging and production lines need to be imported.
About electronics
Unfortunately my work experience is limited to FMCG. But I would venture to suggest that even though you count a chocolate bar, even a smartphone, the laws of the markets are the same. They are probably doing something deliberately and something unconsciously, but the products may differ.
For example, in the iPhone 7/7 Plus, 4G modems were supplied by two companies, Qualcomm and Intel. Apple denied everything, but users who were able to compare had a feeling that Qualcomm modems performed better, which was confirmed by the Cellular Insights study. Was Apple aware of these differences? Who knows, but models with Qualcomm modems were sold only in the USA, China and Japan. Surprisingly, by coincidence, these countries can be described as the most important markets for Apple with the most demanding customers.
By the way, I don’t know what kind of iPhone we are talking about, but Eldar, in his text, leads a dialogue with a friend who asked to buy her an iPhone in the USA. Perhaps she had just encountered the problem of Intel / Qualcomm modems before that:
– You see, I want an iPhone from America, real, of excellent quality.
– Listen, but they are all produced at the same plant, that in the USA, that we have them from the same line.
– You, of course, are a specialist, but for themselves, for their native market, they clearly do it better than for us. We are a third world country for America, they will not supply us with good iPhones.
– They are the same to the cog!
– I had an iPhone bought in Moscow, it was constantly losing the network, but a friend brought it from the USA, and it worked perfectly. If it’s a pity to bring and spend time, say so.
Another example relates to the iPhone 6s, the chipsets for which were manufactured in two factories, TSMC and Samsung.
Speaking of which, Samsung is no exception. Using its own Exynos chipsets and purchased Qualcomm, the company cleverly distributes shipments between countries. Qualcomm chipsets went to the home market and the US market this year.
The powder and chocolate makers mentioned above are really wrong. They mislead the consumer. But Xiaomi, BBK, Intel and AMD, respecting their customers, did the right thing by creating new brands or product lines.
So, Xiaomi acted wisely by launching the Redmi brand, about which it initially said that it would use cheaper components. For understanding, this is a trivial example. There are regular and server-class memory. The latter should be able to work under load for a long time and persistently. And the manufacturer guarantees that he subjects such memory to many tests. Regular memory, in theory, can work in the same way, but there is a certain risk of failure. The same approach can be used to create smartphones, inserting simpler components there, which are hypothetically less reliable. I am glad that we are already living at a time when even cheap components can be classified as high quality.
I don’t know for sure, but logically, we can assume that BBK Electronics also creates realme models, excellent in terms of price / characteristics, according to a similar culinary recipe.
This recipe is known throughout the world. This is how the Celeron processors appeared, which were used by the “rejected” Pentium. AMD had Duron.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize once again that deliberately no reasonable manufacturer will degrade or even more so sell a bad product. But even if the dollar was 30, became 60, and the price on the shelf changed by 5 rubles, then it is worth asking how it happened.
Windows improvements and the battle for Edge
On the official Windows blog, the developers have shared what to expect from future versions. There are many changes, I want to share only a couple of the most important ones.
Firstly, this way, according to Microsoft, is prettier.
Second, despite all the assurances of love and friendship, Microsoft is determined to win the browser battle decisively by spending a lot of energy improving Edge. At first, the Internet was flooded with comparisons between Edge and Chrome. It should be noted that the ears were not attracted. With equal overall performance, Chromium-powered Edge actually consumes 60-70% less memory and CPU performance than Google Chrome. This is especially important for laptop owners who remember how actively Chrome consumes battery under load.
Another good thing is that Microsoft, less interested in advertising than Google, has followed Apple’s path by making Edge a clean browser, blocking all trackers and even allowing you to turn off the news feed on the homepage.
Another big piece of news followed. Microsoft has allowed all Chrome extensions to be imported into Edge. When you install the browser, the extensions themselves will catch up.
And now for a cool new theme. In the next build of Windows, it will be possible to switch between tabs using the Alt + Tab combination.
Can Microsoft Win? Google Chrome has a huge advantage in that it comes by default on every smartphone, syncing history across devices. Given that most users are amorphous and prefer to use the default apps, this is a daunting task for Microsoft.
I recommend that you all urgently download and install Edge. If only so that Google, seeing that its monopoly is under threat, took up the brain and finally optimized Chrome.
Conclusion on a sad note
App Annie has partnered with IDC to estimate that mobile gaming revenue this year will be 3x more than Nintendo Switch, PS 4 and Xbox One releases combined. This is absolutely logical. All smartphone owners play mobile games, the entry threshold is low – only a smartphone is needed – and the games are mostly freemium, that is, you can download and play for free. I think we’ll talk about this model in one of the next issues. Everyone hates her, but in matters of monetization, she is not better.
Accordingly, there is another reason to stop piracy. The more illegal games you download, the less incentives the developers have. It’s easier to make freemium.
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