Kevin Zhang's Profile

Tencent is actually not a gaming company. It started with QQ – still the most popular software in every computer and phone. It’s an instant messaging platform mainly attracts people below 18 years old. So I would say advertising is always the biggest revenue for Tencent. They definitely developed other revenue sources such as gaming, skins, and emoji etc. So in Wechat, the gaming function is very seperate and totaly doesn’t impact user experience in chating and twittering.

Thanks for your comment. It’s very comment to use Wechat to communicate in business settings in China. It can quickly and easily send files and pictures, and communicate with voice messages. So in my previous work, we have multiple Wechat groups communicating issues and arrangement both at work or off work.

Sagar, I think Wechat may has missed the best timing to enter international markets. So in China Wechat best leveraged the mobile trend to launch its product 4 years ago. By that time, it was committed to create the best app user experience to compete with other platforms who were not so good in mobile and won tremendously. But in the US and a lot of other countries, Facebook has already grown into a mature app with good user experience. There’s still opportunity of Wechat which is integration of large numbers of Apps. However, it’s very hard to integrate US local service companies into Wechat without scale first. Another perspective is that CHina market is still very competitive. Wechat’s primary focus is to optimize its product first so that it would not be replaced by another app. I think in the following year Wechat would definitely want to expand internationally. Let’s see how it goes.

Rafiq – thanks for the amazing post. As I observed, the new entrants of high end coffee chains have emerged in different locations around the world when Starbucks became more and more every day coffee. For high end coffee chain, the quality, freshness and deliciousness of its coffee is definitely an attraction to consumers as well as medias to gain huge publicity. But what I’m wondering is that do you think the focus on coffee quality alone can lead to a successful future? From the pictures above, I see the environment of the shop is not necessarily high end considering the comfortableness of chairs and tables and the fashion of decorations. So I thought the only differentiation they are working on is the quality of the coffee. It might be vulnerable for competitors to easily copy the high quality model instead of creating a total experience.

Thank you for the great article. I always hold doubt over the business model of discounted airline. They are a differentiated play in the market vs. Delta or United. They play in completely different consumer segments – personal vs. business, low cost vs. experience. American Airline’s price matching strategy is not necessarily wise since they are completely different players. But want is Spirit’s true competitive advantage? What truly differentiate them vs. other discounted airlines? In this segment, consumers only value low price so in the end, the operator with the lowest cost will win but still can only achieve a low margin due to competition if it doesn’t have true distinct competitive advantage.

Tariro – thank you for the interesting post. I’m always very interested in airline business and took Emirates before. I’m pretty curious on several points you’ve made in your post:
1. The model that Emirates uses large airplanes such as 777 and 380 is very different from American Airlines. In the US, I noticed even between two biggest cities with long distance NYC – LA, all airlines operated in small airplanes such as 737 and 320. What do you think drives the difference? NYC -LA should have huge customer numbers as well.
2. How do you think about Emirates capital structure? They buy the plan or lease the plane? If they buy them, how do they have access to so much capital?