Creative Idea Powerhouse

Right after the Global Financial Crisis, Iceland’s financial system is the first victim in Europe suffered and badly impacted, causing the entire financial eco-system in the country meltdown in less than a month. While the government are still struggering to seek for right solution to restore back the consumer trust and fix the weaken link, Dell has launched the second impact to worsen the economic situation in the EU region on 9th January.

The company has decided to cut off its 1,900 employees in its Limerick factory, located in West of Ireland, and move part of its operation to Porland. This is part of the recent restructuring plan worth $3billion announced by Dell during eve of Year 2008.

Dell is currently the second largest company in Ireland, and also the largest export entity in the country. This move carried out by Dell will directly impacted the income of more than 2,000 families in the country, the supply chain and SMI of the countries, and also indirectly reducing the taxation income of the local authority.

Yesterday when I attending a talk from one of the Corporate Guru in Singapore, Dr. Mah, he strongly pointed out that in the economic crisis, alot of people has already know fact that crisis = opportunity and a large group of the experienced crisis victims in past have already prepared for the worst, and start to taking aggresive actions towards this. However, the important challenge of the personal in seeking for opportunity, and seek to become the next millionaire in this crisis must take good considerations on the point of risk profile, trust and value created by the company that the person is directly investing in, and most important fact is understand self awareness and self goal setting. A clear goal will speak for itself to drive you, to guide you and to inspire you to cruise through this moment.

So, what is your goal for this golden opportunity?:)

Erick @ Techcrunch posted an article today cited the predictions on Tech industry for Year 2009 pertaining to emails he received from Wall Street Analysts. Two companies analysts, J.P. Morgan’s Imran Khan, for instance, predicts Yahoo and Microsoft will finally strike a search deal, video advertising on the Web isn’t working, retail bankruptcies could actually help e-commerce companies, and that M&A activity will pick up in the second half of 2009 (but the IPO market will be dead until 2010). Barclays’ Doug Anmuth believed that both Yahoo and eBay will make major strategic moves this year to try to right their businesses, distribution wars in search will break out between Google and Microsoft, and there will be consolidation among the 300-plus ad networks out there. Both believe that performance-based advertising will continue to rise in importance, good luck to Facebook and wish the company can finally turn the entire e-marketing model.
Erick also reveals six of the ‘make believe’ predictions he received and listed below:

Imran Khan’s 2009 Tech Predictions (J.P. Morgan)
1. Potential search deal likely between Yahoo! and Microsoft
2. Net Neutrality should become an important mainstream issue
3. Challenges in monetizing video advertising should persist
4. Mobile usage should continue its strong growth momentum, but mobile advertising will likely be challenging this year
5. Possible bankruptcies in brick-and-mortar retail should create opportunities for eCommerce companies
6. M&A consolidation activities could potentially resume during 2H’09 (IPO market is dead until 2010)

Doug Anmuth’s 2009 Tech Predictions (Barclays Capital)
1. Yahoo and eBay will make major strategic decisions
2. Performance-based advertising will be more important than ever
3. Increased Competition For Search Distribution Via Toolbars, OEM Deals, and Partnerships
4. Proliferation of Smart Phones Will Drive The Mobile Internet
5. Small Strategic Acquisitions Will Re-Emerge
6. Ad Networks To Consolidate

Personally, due to my nature of business background, I am particularly interested in Imran’s prediction on Retail industry. I will share out my opinion on this in later post, but I believe that the traditional Brick-and-mortar retail will still survive, for at least another 2 years, but the retailers need to take immediate action to revisit their operation and profit model. The ‘look alike prediction’ will be there will be many new e-commerce store comes online, which caused the e-retailing industry to continue blossom and enjoy steadily growth for the next 5 years. More technologies will be invented to focus on how to convert visitors from online portal to become consumers. Social commerce will be a big hit also if Apple Apps, Facebook and other social networks implement their online micropayment model. Best wishes for e-Retailing in 2009!

Right at the last countdown for Y2008, the Internetnews.com published a shocking new about Microsoft is laying off the underperforming business units. The layoff is around 10% – 17% of the staff forces in Microsoft. If true, the cuts would be the first “official” layoffs in Microsoft’s history — blunting a point that the company has always pointed to as a matter of pride.

According to Internetnews.com, the rumor is originated from Microsoft insider from Blog @ Mini Microsoft. The rumor also raise that the layoff will likely to take place during CES, looking at date of 15 Jan, 09. Enderle said that if Microsoft goes through with the rumored cuts, he expected to see the ax fall hardest in areas that are underperforming, such as units of the Entertainment and Devices Division and the Online Business Division. Granted that Entertainment and Devices, headed by president Robbie Bach, has the profitable Xbox game consoles, it also has the Zune music player, a serious underperformer in Microsoft’s portfolio.



Would like to share with you a very interesting slide presenting the Future of Social network. Personally I think Social Network will face a big challenge in 2009 to get a mature business model that able to prove its profitability and for the new players just entered the competitio, best wishes to them.

Mike from Giga OM has recently wrote an article saying Social Network will recieve more welcomes in 2009 due to economic depression (where many people will start to hang back at home – and go online and doing socialling business instead of going out and hang at Starbucks for F2F socialling business), yeap it is true but how can these site turn it to a promising profit model and start to cheers its investors and gain more confident and ensure their next payment are on-time? I believe some social network site have started to focus on revenue generation, and facebook, myspace and Apple Apps will focus more on Micropayment this year (where I believe it is a very strong and bold move for them to materialise from their large user base).

Anyway, enjoy the slide, and it is a challenging Y2009! Happy New Year and best wishes for long live Web 2.0.