Financial Crisis - some information about it

Nowadays, Financial Crisis is a very hot topic all over the world. It's unavoidable. You can see it anywhere, from the newspaper, TV, online, radio... So, what is it?

I'm not a finance expert, I just want to share some information that I have and what I know about the crisis.

What’s the financial crisis?
- As the definition on Wikipedia: The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults.

- In terms of Scope, Financial crisis is usually used for at least a country or a region. The border in this world now is not very clear, means all the markets are interconnecting. That’s why the financial crisis is easily spreading.

What’s the current financial crisis?
- The biggest cause of the crisis was the bankruptcy of some big US banks, especially Lehman Brothers. In fact, there were some early signs of the global financial crisis from the end of last year. When the price of real estate was so high versus its original price, some experts predicted that there would be a real estate crisis and it would probably lead to a bigger financial sink.
The prediction came true almost six months later. The first systems collapsed were the banking and the secured loan financial system. Since most of the assets were pledged were real estate, and after the real estate issue, these securities became cheaper and then indirectly became bad credits.
Consequently, the bad credits made the bank system run out of cash and faced the asset-liability mismatch. And it critically impacted to the credit-worthiness of these banks.
The situation at that time was worst when consumers tried to withdraw their cash from these banks. And it directly made these banks bankrupted.

- The bankruptcy of some major banks in US led to some other bigger problems with some big corporations. Consumers lost the trust to the US stock market and they at the same time withdrew as much cash as the can from the market. The US stock market soon sunk within a week. Other investors from Europe and Japan (especially some big corporations) lost a lot from the stock market. Consequently, their consumers knew about the situation and withdrew cash from them as well. Europe and Japan soon became in the crisis with US.

- Of course not only the real estate bubble and the bank issue lead US and their “partners” – Europe – to the financial crisis. The inflation and the regulatory failures of US are the next two biggest issues impact to the US financial. US inflation was high (around 4 – 7%/year some recent years), high import while low export, the FED (the Federal Reserve System) had some failure policies like cutting the interest to help the stock market many times to increase the cash flow and the bank bad credit – indirectly led the bank system to the issue of asset-liability.

Steps the world is taking to fight against the crisis?
- The first step that all countries are trying to do now is to save their banks. All the countries are now trying to partially or fully commit with their citizens of the guarantee for their deposit accounts in their banks and buy back the bad credits from their banks. This is an extremely important step. Except quite few countries can have enough cash on their hand to provide to their markets, most of the countries can’t get enough cash on hand now.
Even when the government has enough cash, they need to be very careful to release the cash to the market. Because it will create another bigger issue: Inflation. The more inflation they have, the less power of their cash is. It’s a big round, and finally, they won’t have enough cash to supply for their market.

- Increase cash flow, as I know, will be the second important step to save the market form the financial crisis. You have to pay either cash or credit for your good. But in the time that bad credits are everywhere, cash flow is the single choice for the government.

- Save stock markets: in almost any case, stock market is the third choice for the country. Banking system and inflation must be the first choice; the consumers’ trust in the market is the second one. Stock market at that time will be easier to save if these 2 biggest issues are solved. At the end of the day, stock market is very much relied on the banking system and the trust of their consumers.

CNet's top 10 fast selling mobiles in Sep 08 (Asia)

This is the 3rd consecutive month that E71 leads this list. This fact partially reflects the current consumer trend in mobile phones. I think consumers like to use a good looking, slim yet powerful, with keypad (or Qwerty keyboard), and having a familiar OS.
Another highlight is no Nokia Nseries in the list. At almost the same time, Nokia announced a sales drop in 3rd quarter 2008 vs 3rd quarter 2007. Nseries's lack of success is (maybe) the key reason for the drop. Below is the full list:

1. Nokia E71 (3rd month on the top):
I personally love E71 (I have one myself). I love this phone because of its nice looking and manly shape, power (16M color screen - 3G - Wifi - GPS - 3.2mp camera), QWERTY keyboard, steel cover, and some other office functions. I think consumers like this product for the same reason.
Besides, the E71 has a reasonable price which is another reason to help it maintain its leading position (while maybe make Nokia lost some NOS in the 3rd quarter 08 - LOL...).

2. Nokia E66:
Another Nokia phone in the Eseries - which is focusing on business people. While E71 is manly and powerful for businessmen, E66 is nice, simple yet powerful, and slim for businesswomen.
Nokia E66 has almost the same functions as the E71, except the keypad (normal phone number keypad) (E71 has a QWERTY keyboard) and a smaller screen. There're no other differences between these 2 models.
Nokie E66 price is a little higher than the E71, but it's still reasonable. Maybe Nokia thinks that businesswomen are a little richer than businessmen. :) LOL...

3. Samsung F480:
Next to the 2 phones for business people is the camera phone with a big touch screen. With a 5mp camera, the touch screen and an attractive design, Samsung F480 is a great phone for multimedia purposes.
The disadvantages of this phone are no Wifi support, no OS. This phone is purely for multimedia purposes.
Samsung F480 has a little higher price than E71 and E66, but for a touch phone it's still a good price.

4. Sony Ericsson C902:
The 4th position is the same as the previous month. C902 has a 5mp camera like his brother - K850i - but the design and color is much better. It supports 3G and GPS as well.
C902 also has a good music function. Its price is as same as the E71, better than Samsung F480 (maybe since it doesn't have a touch screen).

5. Nokia 6500 slide:
Another Nokia phone, I'm not surprised why this phone lost 3 rankings in September. Having a good design with a steel cover, a stable slider and some other multimedia functions, this phone is a good choice for a lot of simple consumers, who don't need some other functions like GPS, 5mp camera, Wifi...
Since Nokia released some better phones (E71, E66, N78, N96...), this phone is predicted to lose its position in the list step by step.

6. Sony Ericsson W910i:
Lost 1 rank versus last month.
Has a good design and a great music function, supported by some other good functions like 3G, HSPDA, this phone is successfully replacing the W850i to be a great music phone.
The price of W910i is also good, but the music output is not 3.5mm; maybe the Achille's heel of this phone.

7. 3G Iphone:
This phenomenal US phone was launched in Aug 08 in Asia, but not until September did it appear first time in this list. There's not a lot of Telcos to support launching this phone and a high price (with no contract, unlocking) make this phone not as popular as in the US and Europe.
Anyway, with a great touch screen (big as well), I think it still has some chance to grow its ranking if its price will drop in the future (I guess it has to be cheaper when Google G1 phone launches in the near future in Asia).

8. Sony Ericsson W890i:
It's another Walkman phone in Sony Ericssons family. I'm quite surprised why this phone is quite expensive (versus the W910i). I personally love music phones. I love music, but I really don't want to have another mp3 player (besides my mobile phone). To bring an earphone is quite inconvenient with me. But to pay a lot for a simple phone (no Wifi, no GPS, small screen) is something that i'm not willing to do.
Anyway, Sony Ericsson is again proving that its music phones are dominating the music phone market.

9. Sony Ericssons G900:
Another month this phone has the 9th position. With a reasonable price (a little lower than E71 and E66), some office functions, supporting wifi, 5mp camera and a touch screen, the successor of P1i is difficultly climbing step by step to a higher position.
But because of its small screen and single point touch screen, I don't think it will be in the top 5 of this list in the future.

10. Nokia 6300:
I'm quite surprised with this phone. I thought it would disappear from this list, but I was wrong. I know it has a good design and supports some office functions, but it's quite outdated. Anyway, the grey future of the world's economy makes people save more and more maybe the reason why people love this phone.

Generally, this list reflects the consumer trend of last month. I still don't know why Nokia Nseries is still absent from this list. I'm not a big fan of Nokia, but to be fair, I think Nokia N82 or N81 is good and reasonable enough to be in this list. I think they will join the top in the near future. Let's see what happens next month.

And it's a new buzz - new E71

As a member of Nokia E-series, E71 once again makes a buzz for Nokia in smart phones for businessmen. For a long time, Nokia has been a brand name for Asian businessmen (and even European). Now with the upgrade from E61 and E61i to E71, Nokia once again proves their ambition to be a leader in almost all consumer segmentations.

1. Design - 2.36'' screen - keyboard:
The 1st impression for the E71 is the stability while the size doesn't make people think it's big.
Versus E61 and E61i, E71 has the smaller screen (2.36'' vs 2.8''). I, on the other hand, love a bigger screen. But in a total design, it's acceptable for the 2.36'' screen.
The screen is quite bright, but i wish it were sharper like Sony Erricssons. Remember, i once compared the Sony Erricssons K800i with the E61. With the same image, but it's looks sharper in the K800i.
E71 keyboard, in my opinion, sets the new standard for QWERTY phones. It's quite condensed in a reasonable space. It doesn't have any gaps like the E61 or the E61i and other Blackberry phones.

2. Email and Connectivity:
Like other new Nokia phones (E65, N95, N82, N81, E61, E61i...), the E71 supports Mail for Exchange and other internet email like Gmail and Yahoo! (if you know how to set it up).
For connectivity, with GSM/GPRS/EDGE 4 bands: 850MHz/900MHz/1800MHz/1900MHz, high speed 3G UMTS/HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 a,b,g, Bluetooth 2.0, và GPS, E71 has almost all connectivities that consumers need

3. OS:
Despite Symbians is not a high-tier and open OS like Windows mobile or Android, it is still a preferred mobile OS because of its ease-to-use, popularity (40% market is Nokia users), and having a lot of supporting softwares.
With the new version of Symbians OS 60 (version 9.2), you now can enjoy a lot of built-in languages in your phone (Nokia commits to supporting all Asian languages).

4. Call quality and battery:
Call quality of the E71 like other Nokia phone, it's as good as the best in the world.
And finally, the battery is one of the most powerful functions of the E71. BP-4L is a very powerful battery. As advertised, with BP-4L, you can have up to 10 hours for calling or 17 days for standby.

Overall, I like the E71 for its stability, good design, good battery and good wifi. I just got one and I will enjoy it soon.

Qwerty phone vs. Touch phone

Just would like to have a simple comparision between the Qwerty phone and the Touch phone.
I had used a Nokia E61 (Qwerty) phone for a long time and have used a HTC Touch Enhanced for about 3 months.
As of now, I miss the Nokia E61 a lot for some reasons below:

1. I usually take note, so no real keyboard doesn't fit to me (the HTC Touch just has a virtual keyboard), especially when I need to write fast.
2. Personally, I see that Symbians OS is faster than Windows Mobile, especially when synchronizing with laptop / computer. I really don't know why Windows Mobile is slower than Symbians in synchronizing (Windows Mobile - Windows), but that's the fact I have experienced.
3. Voip is supported with the E61. This function works really well and I love it.
4. Windows Mobile usually hangs (about twice / week), despite I don't install too much applications on the Touch.
5. Bluetooth on the E61 works obviously better than on the Touch. This is another strange point. I usually think Windows and Windows Mobile supports Bluetooth better than the Symbians does.

Of course there're some advantages of HTC Touch that I can never refuse:

1. Playing games on Touch devices is fantastic.
2. Surfing Internet and Wifi on Touch devices is fantastic too.
3. Touch functionality makes me feel really comfortable when searching information and makes me feel professional. :-)
   

But after all, the most important functions that I really want to have as of now, and maybe in the future are:

1. Call - sms
2. Taking notes - writing emails
3. Surfing Internet
4. Synchronizing data with laptop
5. Playing games

So, based on the functions I want, the Nokia E series (61 or 71 later) are my better options versus the Touch devices (or Windows Mobiles / Mac without keypad) (Result: 3 vs. 2)
That's the reason why I'm waiting for the new Nokia E71 and will try to trade my HTC Touch Enhanced with E71 then. :-)

Create a new blog

Today is Jul 05 - Saturday. I officially open new blog in Blogspot.com for myself. I actually have a blog in Yahoo 360, but I want to have a separate blog to discuss and talk about technology, consumer marketing, branding, advertising, information infrastructure, and so on.
My hobby changes from time to time. So, I think the kinds of topics will be updated from time to time as well.
Have a nice day! :-)