Roam And Wander, a toy and children’s entertainment studio that is currently participating in 500 Startups’ accelerator program, is now raising funds for its latest stuffed animal on Kickstarter. Called DiDi, the classic brown teddy bear is twice as large as Roam and Wander’s last toy, a bunny named TuTu, and comes to life with the aid of an iPad. Read More
If there’s one thing about Apple is that they are consistent with the pricing of their products. If one were to hop on over to an Apple retail store or online website, you will realize that the prices of their iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers are more or less the same compared to other countries, with slight differences either due to currency conversion or taxes, but at the end of the day, the prices are too wildly different. It makes for a pretty fair scenario but over in Taiwan, it seems that the commission for the Fair Trade Act is not too pleased with how Apple is meddling with the prices in the country.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the FTC claims that retailers and carriers who have been given the right to sell Apple’s iPhone, should be able to sell them at whatever prices they want after paying Apple for said rights, although this upset seems to be directed towards the iPhone only as the rest of Apple’s other products were not mentioned. The report goes on to state that the carriers had to submit pricing plans to Apple for approval before their iPhones were able to be sold. It is because of this alleged meddling that Apple is currently facing a $670,000 fine which they can appeal if they choose, but if they were to ignore the fine, it is possible that the fine would then be increased.
Taiwan FTC Fines Apple For Price Meddling original content from Ubergizmo. 
     |
Chances are that if you’re reading this, you didn’t recently buy an iPhone in Taiwan. As it happens, that may be for the best — according to a Wall Street Journal report published earlier today, Apple has been fined NT$20,000,000 by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission for attempting to influence iPhone sale prices. That may sound like a lot, but the reality is considerably less dramatic — that figure only works out to about $667,000. The price tag for further noncompliance raises the stakes a bit more though, as Apple would have to shell out an additional NT$50 million (~$1.6 million).
Pretty soon we’ll be talking about real money.
As the story goes, Apple insisted on signing off on iPhone pricing plans for three of Taiwan’s largest telecom companies — Chunghwa Telecom (far and away the biggest of the lot), FarEasTone Telecommunications, and Taiwan Mobile. Under Taiwanese law, those companies should be free from any sort of corporate interference once they have purchased the rights to distribute said iDevices from Apple, which sadly doesn’t appear to be the case.
The WSJ’s report goes on to note that Apple has the option to appeal the commission’s decision, but at this point there’s no word if the company plans to avail itself of that option. I’ve reached out to Apple for comment, but seeing as how it’s Christmas, I’m not holding my breath for a speedy response.
Now if we’re being honest, this isn’t the first time a major smartphone player has been caught playing hard and fast with Taiwanese law. Samsung has also been party to its share of legal imbroglios in Taiwan in 2013, as it kicked off the year by getting slapped with a NT$300,000 (roughly US$10,389) fine for running ads claiming that its Galaxy Y Duos smartphone had an autofocusing camera with a flash. It didn’t. Samsung also came under fire later that year for crafting a astroturfing campaign that saw paid flacks attack Taiwanese competitor HTC’s products online.
And the kicker? The campaign probably wasn’t even necessary. I’ll gladly admit to being a fan of HTC’s wares, but there’s no denying that company is still facing its share of financial woes.
If we’re being totally honest, the sorts of fines that get levied on these tech titans are unlikely to cause any lasting shift in behavior. Let’s not forget that Apple has something like $150 billion (probably much more) tucked away neatly in its cash reserves. Naturally, Samsung too is well-equipped to absorb regulatory fines as it gets hit with them — revenues for the chaebol as a whole continue to account for nearly a fifth of South Korea’s GDP, with a considerable chunk of that coming from its lucrative (and prolific) consumer electronics division. Let’s consider that Samsung astroturfing case again. As Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt adroitly pointed out when this all went down, the NT$10 million fine doesn’t amount to much more than a rounding error when you consider that Samsung’s 2012 marketing budget weighed in at a whopping $5.3 billion.
Did the whole rigmarole actually work? Who knows. What is clear though is that some very prominent companies seem to think it’s easier — and perhaps more lucrative — to say sorry and take a (very) mild financial drubbing than it is to play by the rules in the first place. They might not be wrong.
Like the Samurai’s mempo, the uniforms of many of today’s Special Forces units play dual roles. Not only do they protect the wearer’s face and conceal his identity, they terrify the pants off of the enemy. Take the newly unveiled uniforms of Taiwan’s Special Forces for example. They look like something out of Army of Two.
| |
Samsung might not be on Santa’s nice list this year, but rather, run up a deficit as they end up on the naughty list. Why do we say so? Well, they have been caught for ‘stealing’ electricity – or rather, using a different tier in order to save money (but have been duly reprimanded and fined as we have reported earlier this morning). Not only that, we now have word that Samsung has been fined by the Taiwan government for coming up with fake Internet comments on message boards that promote their products while downplaying the devices of their rivals.
This particular fine, which was described by the Taiwan Fair Trade Association, happens to be in the region of NT$10 million, which is $341,037. Chump change really, for the South Korean conglomerate, but it does send a message to the masses that the Taiwanese government would not tolerate such behaviour known as “astroturfing” by companies, no matter how famous or big they are. Apparently, Samsung did hire a third party company known as OpenTide who paid a bunch of people to comment on message board forums which gave bouquets to Samsung products, while being critical of its competitors’ products. Just how widespread do you think such a practice is in the industry?
Taiwan Government Fines Samsung For Fake Internet Comments original content from Ubergizmo. 
| |
Sometimes companies do stupid things to market their products. A silly commercial here. A ridiculous junket there
| |
The stars have aligned in such a way that two of our favorite, yet disparate interests are crossing paths: gadgets and Slurpees. Hon Hai Precision Industry (better known as Foxconn’s parent company) has struck a deal with 7-Eleven, and will manufacture slates for the latter to sell in Taiwan. Details are slim on the 7-inch (7.11-inch?) tablet, but it’s now up for pre-order, and the pair hope to give 3,000 units new homes in the first three months of sales. As absurd as it sounds, this isn’t the first partnership between the unlikely couple. In June, a similar deal resulted in 7-Eleven-branded TVs (in 40-, 60- and 70-inch flavors), and over 15,000 have been sold since. Now, a 50-inch set has been added to the mix, and between five and ten new products — which include smartphones and laptops — will be available by years’ end. Rather than crowding the inside of shops with the gadgets, the televisions were up for order through the convenience store’s 7net website as well as brick and mortar locations, and it appears the other hardware will follow suit. We don’t expect the gas station to dabble in electronics stateside, so you might as well make the most of a trip to Taiwan and pick up a Honey Lemon Slurpee while you’re at it.
[Image credit: Nicky Fernandes, Flickr]
Source: Taipei Times
The fine people of Canada may still not have access to Spotify, but Greece, Turkey, Taiwan and Argentina are all getting the ad-supported music-on-demand service starting today. Yes, that’s at least one new country for three separate continents — Spotify’s really spreading the love around with today’s expansion, apparently. According to the company, that puts Spotify in 32 total “markets” worldwide, comprising 24 million “active users” — not too shabby for seven years of existence!
The company’s last big expansion was in April, when it arrived in Mexico, Malaysia and several other territories. Here’s hoping it finally arrives in Canada some time this year as well — our Canadian staffers are getting awfully antsy.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Spotify
While ASUS has some way to go before dominating the world with its PadFones, it seems that the company is still very much committed to this eccentric phone-in-tablet idea. What’s more interesting is that rather than launching a completely new device, this time we’re given a nice spec bump in a near-identical device, meaning existing PadFone Infinity users can keep their tablet docks and swap just the phone. But is it worth the upgrade? Let’s take a quick look.
%Gallery-slideshow84447%
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, ASUS
Just as promised, today ASUS has made its new PadFone Infinity official in Taipei, and there are definitely no surprises in the specs. The main update here is obviously the 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 SoC, along with the addition of a microSD slot plus a secondary microphone for noise cancellation. Unsurprisingly, the internal storage options have been lowered to 16GB and 32GB, which is understandable with that new storage expansion capability.
One very subtle change that we missed in the leaks is the new diamond cut on the metallic backside, which gives the phone a more premium and solid look than the original version. To accompany that, the new PadFone Infinity comes in two new color options: “Titanium Black” and “Platinum White.”
The software has also been given a gentle facelift, courtesy of a more consistent design language throughout the system — from the simplified icons to the UI of some of the built-in Android apps. Since this is based on Android 4.2 instead of 4.1 out of the box, we should also see some performance boost as well. The good news for existing users is that the original PadFone Infinity will also receive this update, but there’s no time frame for the roll-out just yet. %Gallery-slideshow84453%
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, ASUS
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
