Black Friday is the most craziest shopping festivals in the western countries. However, Apple did not join the promotion directly.

It offered unusual discounts for Apple products in the past few years, even though the prices did not drop much. Sometimes, it just granted the iTunes gift card. Apple worked hard to cater to the crazy consumers. Apple did not offer any forms of discounts this year.

Apple has unapproachable pricing right for the consumable electronic products due to its capacity of vertical integration. It focuses on the product quality and differentiation. Its price each product is higher than the similar product made by other companies. It prefers to offer special discounts for educational markets instead of selling the re-manufactured products at lower prices.

The pricing strategy is one of the main reasons for Apple products keep expensive. On the other hand, Apple does not restrict its third-party partners to sell its products at lower prices. Besides Apple official online stores and offline retail stores, wireless carries and retailers are still the important parts for Apple products’ popularization.

On Black Friday, users could find some discounts for Apple products via the authorized retailers. The prices did not drop much in comparison with the official prices. Apple only offered 3% discount for its first generation iPad in 2011.

This Black Friday Apple offered discount from $100 to $400 cheaper than usual at retail stores. It was to stimulate the consumers to purchase Apple products at the retail stores.

If Apple wants to promote some products, it will give the promotion prices to the retailers, rather than announcing via official media. This helps the retailers to turn around their business performance.

The global e-business focuses on Black Friday after November 11 promotion. The payment process is a must no matter you purchase online or offline.

TECH2IPO made report concerned the introduction of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay in China. These two giants reply on their handsets and payment platforms to realize the transaction.

WeChat relies on its fans in overseas to develop its payment app. In South Africa, one can receive a ID number to verify his identity so that he could use Wechat Wallet to pay o iOS and Android.

WeChat Wallet supports bank transfer, ATM encashment and VAISHL payment in overseas. Its function is similar with other payment apps.

To those Chinese tourists who travel abroad, it is convenient to pay by WeChat Wallet. It is necessary to exchange foreign currency. It will automatically exchange the RBM to the local currency on the basis of currency rate at the day. It saves the commission produced between banks, while the commission goes to WeChat.

WeChat cooperated wtih HuaNan Commercial Bank, qfpay.com, cardinfolink.com Royal Pay and HK Tong TAI to develop introduce its payment platform to abroad.

The day before Black Friday, Woori Bank and Tencent signed contact for cooperation. Tencent is responsible for the settlement transactions in Korea. Woori Bank teamed up with to support such service to NICE clients.

WeChat Wallet supports the payment in pound, HK dollar, yen, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Euro, New Zealand dollar and Won. It is available in more than twenty countries.

More and more users might notice WeChat Wallet during the Black Friday holiday. The tendency of mobile payment market will be intense next year.

Facebook is recruiting more talents to promote its Instant Articles in Asia. It suggests Facebook consider Asian market as its practical places for Instant Articles.

Singapore office- Facebook headquarter for the Asia-Pacific region announced its contractor recruitment notice to develop the Instant Articles a few weeks ago. It requires the applicants can speak Thai and Vietnamese.

Instant Articles allows medium press their news content on Facebook instead of article link. Facebook claimed that the loading velocity on Instant Articles are 10 times faster than mobile platforms. This service was launced in May in America and introduced to India last week.

” We have been planning to globally introduce this service and march to the right markets. All the publishers are welcome to join this service for the right market,”said Facebook spokesman.

The analyst suggested Facebook has great interest in Indian, Thai and Vietnamese markets as more and more users have access to internet via cheap mobile devices.

Facebook considers India as its second largest market, behind United States. Facebook’s montly active users reached 130 million times in India. According to the statistics made by We Are Social, Thailand had 38 million Facebook users and Vietnam got 36 million users.

Chris Cox claimed at WSJDLive last month, Instant Articles would benefit its Facebook users there as the internet speed run lower in the developing countries.

So Far, BuzzFeed, Washington Post, New York Times, SPIEGEL and Bild joined Facebook’s Instant Articles.

The manufacturer Jawbone for fitness tracker was in trouble recently. According to the news confirmed by TechCrunch, Jawbone laid off 60 employees, accounting for 15% of its total workforce.

The job cut is worldwide execution. It made impact on some aspects of Jawbone’s business. In the meanwhile, Jawbone shut down its New York office and shrinked the offices size of Sunnyvale and Pittsburgh.

Jawbone announced that the job cut was for the company’s reorganization. This reorganization will not affect its products. What’s more, Jawbone is now putting more expenses and time to study, produce and promote the UP fitness tracker.

In recent years, Jawbone faced much pressure for the hit competition in this industry. According to the statment of Ben Bajarin from the marketing research institution called Creative Strategies, the fitness tracker market is now led by some major manufacturers.

Among them, Fitbit and Xiaomi account for 70% of the market share. Xiaomi donimates the low-end market while Fitbit donimates the high-end market. Fitbit obtains 50% of the market share. He suggests that Fitbit will continue donimate the market. So far, Jawbone only obtains 6% of the market share.

Jawbone has carried out the second job cut since this summer. It financed $300 million in June and laid off 20 employees then.

It is an important strategy to cut jobs for Jawbone. It aims to cut expenses and focuses on products’ quality.

Sharp is struggling for sales. It requires employees to buy its products to stimulate consumptions. Sharp made limit of consumption sum to different groups inside the company.

According to the report of some Japanese media, each of diretors and management employees need to purchase LCD TV, refrigerator, wash machine or other home appliances from the company at the value of 200,000 yen. Each middle management employees need to purchase 100,000 yen goods, while the each of ordinary employees need to buy 50,000 yen goods.

This rule is to stimulate its sales growth. Sharp claims that this policy is not compulsory. It hopes the employees make priority to buy its own products instead of rivals.

Kyo Ontani, the spokesman of Sharp said :”this policy is carried out under the principle of voluntariness. The company does not decide what series of products will sell to its employees yet. What’s more, the company did not set a limit for eomployees’ amount of purchase.”

Sharp is famous for selling TV and solar panel. Due to the hit competition it faces it China mainland and Taiwan, Sharp is out of the north America market.

This May, Mizuho Corporate Bank and Mitsubishi UFJ offered 1.7 billion yen assistance to Sharp. It was the second large-scale financing aid to Sharp since 2012.

It is reported that the banks that offered loans to Sharp have noticed it to pay back the loads as soon as possible. Some banks required the payback should be made before next March.

According to its earnings by September, Sharp is in 84 billion yen deficit, its sales volume declined 4% in comparison with the same period last year.

VentureBeat reported that Google announced it reached 800 million monthly active users for mobile Chrome at Chrome Dev Summit on Tuesday.

Google took one year to double its monthly active users for Google Android and iOS Chrome on the basis of 400 million active users. This figure is all mobile application publishers want to realize.

Google did not reveal the exactly active users of Android Chrome and iOS Chrome. Android Chrome seems to obtain more active users, but Chrome is also welcome by many iOS users.

Google claims that Chrome sends 350 million notifications to 2,300 websites each day at present. The number of websites still increase. Chrome browser is applied by more and more users, especially for mobile Chrome versions. Chrome has great potential.

Google reported that its Chrome active users already reached one billion at Google I/O conference which was held in May. The figure for Chrome active users must grow a lot.

From the figure that Google reported, the public realize how many users apply the mobile Chrome at the same time.

It shared more related data concerns its Web application kit-Polymer on Tuesday. Polymer is aiming to help developers to bring the high quality application experience to desktop and mobile Chrome.

Since Polymer 1.0 was released at Google I/O, its application reached substantial growth. Polymer is used in over one million web-pages and designs of over 300 Google in-house projects.

With the popularity of low-end smartphones in India, millions of Indian consumers have access to Internet and online shopping gets prosperous. India is the biggest oversea market to Amazon except US.

Amazon encountered the same problem with Flipkart and Snapdeal when they deliver packages. The crowded traffic and road signs are major problems to its delivery. They built the local logistics network by using the motorcycles to deliver packages.

Amazon claims that it will apply the innovative methods which are made in India to use in US, Mexico and Brazil.

Amazon introduced Easy Ship service to UK. Amazon initiate launched the Easy Ship in India last year, reducing the costs of storage, packing and separate delivery freights.

The couriers can directly take the parcels from the sellers and send to the consumers in the light of their order information. It saves time and costs for delivery between warehouses and the need of warehouses.

Morgan Stanley expects Indian e-commerce will be increased to $137 billion by 2020, while its business scale is only $11 billion in 2013. There is great popential in Indian market. Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal all wish to obtain more shares.

Amazon keeps modifying its delivery service to meet the consumers’ need. It launched Amazon Prime, same-day delivery and speed delivery in hours in some cities. Easy Ship and Motorcycle delivery are customized solutions base on the local traffic conditions.

There was a conflict between Betamax and VHS in the imagine development history, Sony’s Betamax met its waterloo. Sony recently announced that it will end the sales of Betamax videotapes from March 2016.

According to BBC news report, Sony announced this new through its official website. It will halt to sell the videotapes that use for Micro MV.

In fact, Sony had not launched the compatible device for Betamax video tape recorder since 2005.

Betamax is a format standard for a kind of videotape which was launched in 1975 by Sony. In 1976, Japanese JVC company launched the VHS format. The two companies and their supporters started competiting then. VHS won during their competitions and became the authorized record format for videotapes.

It is reported that Betamax gets better definition for images, but VHS could record three times longer than Sony. In addition, the cost for VHS recording device is cheaper.

The competition for record format between Betamax and VHS becomes a typical commercial textbook case.

Many old brand TV institutions still have the recorded tv shows made by Betamax videotapes. From 2000, BBC did not use Betamax to record shows any more.

Videotapes are being replaced by CDs in video recording and saving aspects. The internet is easier to access now. And the internet videos are getting popular. The physical equipment for saving the videos become less popular. Many people use the smartphones to record videos and post them to the internet.

Sony is in a stage of transition and reorganization. Many of its non-core technologies and assets have been transferred. Game console,games, movie & tv entertainment, CMOS become Sony’s major business.

Toyota announced on November 7 that the company will invest $ 1 billion to build branch that focuses on the luanch of artificial interlligence and robots in Silicon Valley.

Toyota plans to local a site near by Stanford University and MIT University. These two universities both make great achievement in artificial interlligence.

Toyota named the new firm as TRI and it will be official established next January. The former chief of DARPA robot challenge match Gill Pratt will be its CEO. Pratt claims that the major projects for TRI in the beginning will be the artificial interllience that use in vehicels and robots. Cars

Toyota paid close attentions to self-driving cars and robots in recent years. It launched for auxiliary line robots in 2013. It displayed the latest research achievement on seld-driving vehicle technology in last September.

Now that technology is testing on a Lexus car. Its aim to be self-driving on the road as Google did might be realized in 2020. Of course, Toyota’s self-driving technology is still far away from Google’s and Tesla’s.

To enhance its artificial interlligence, Toyota wishes to make safer and more intelligent cars. Early this September, Toyota, Stanford University and MIT University established the cooperative relationships to study the artifical intelligence technology.

In the following five years, Toyota will invest $50 million on this project. Toyota also benefits from the cooperation with those two universities that it can recruit more talents for TRI.

Pratt addressed that the company will also set up a foundation to invest some startups in order to learn more from other aspects for the research.