What Is Your Favorite Beirut Website?
Author: Krikor
Live Life Light
PS3 Dominates Consoles in France
Since Christmas 2010, Sony’s PS3 console surpassed the Wii and Xbox 360 in volume and value.
With over 174,000 units sold between December 27, 2010 and April 10, 2011, the PS3 dominates the French market for home consoles. Anticipating by far Nintendo’s Wii (131,000 units over the same period) and the XBox 360 (107,000 units).
Market domination is obviously even greater in value since the Sony console is usually sold 300 euros against 200 for the Wii and some models of XBox 360.
In total, Sony announced that it sold 3 million PS3s in France and 50 million worldwide. Nintendo dominated the market of home consoles with the Wii until recently, thus it is difficult to maintain its leadership. And even if the market of Wii consoles in France remains the largest (nearly 6 million units sold to date), its sales is in continuous decline.
Hard Drives
Samsung Electronics announced Tuesday the sale of its hard drives division to Seagate for 1.375 billion U.S. dollars (963 million euros) in cash and stock.
This sale will allow Samsung, which holds 10.7% market share worldwide in hard drives, to raise funds to finance investment in their growth activities. Samsung will receive 9.6% stake in Seagate and 687.5 million dollars in cash.
In March, Western Digital had bought the Japanese division of Hitachi hard drives for $ 4.3 billion, giving it a global market share approaching 50%. Seagate controlled 32% of the global market drives and with this acquisition, it will bring it to about 40% market share.
Pietro Ferrero, Dies While Cycling
Pietro Ferrero, chief executive officer of the Ferrero group, maker of Nutella chocolate spread and Tic Tacs, and heir to Italy’s biggest fortune, died yesterday of a suspected heart attack during a bike ride in Cape Town, South Africa. He was 47.
Born September 11, 1963, Pietro Ferrero was CEO of the family group, which is not publicly traded and is known for his love of secrecy with his brother Giovanni, who is one year younger, since 1997.
Their father Michael, aged 85, is still president of the group, which has been a giant of the world’s confectionery industry. He is the richest man in Italy, according to Forbes magazine.
Ferrero is today one of the giants of the sector, their turnover reached 6.6 billion euros in 2009-2010 (+4.3% yoy). It has 18 factories worldwide and employs over 21,700 people.
Group Buying – One More Player
I already posted about group buying not long time ago and I was wondering if I should post this, one more time, because I am still not getting this business model specially in the Middle East and North Africa region and how they are going to generate money.
Yesterday, I found a new player from my twitter timeline, called GoSawa, because curiosity killed the cat, I pointed my browser to the site.
On their “about us” page, you discover that they were established in January 2011 and “If it ain’t a good deal, it won’t be featured on our site – that simple.”, and since, they have closed only 2 deals in Beirut as follows:
1) Coconut Body Scrub & Relaxing Foot Reflexology Massage: US$25- x 18 bought = US$450-
2) $30 for $60 worth of Tattoo at Scream Body: US$30- x 6 bought = US$180-
So the total value of both deals is US$630- and considering their share is 50%, they ended up making US$315- since they launched, so that’s effectively US$3-/day (from 01/01/2011 till 15/04/2011).
I might sound very sarcastic doing these small calculations, but wondering how the owners of these sites are making money to cover expenses,… just saying.
One last word to group buying sites, stop using the same template, it seems you have lots of cash to burn, go spend some money and get a different design for your sites, you might end up distinguishing yourself from the crowd.
Elephants & Domain Names
I am a loyal client of GoDaddy and their price club BlueRazor, but i was really shocked when i lately discovered that GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons went on an African vacation and shot an elephant and recorded the whole thing on video.
A video of Parsons shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe made the rounds, causing the domain registry company to become a Google hot topic and the subject of criticism. Leading the charge is PETA, the animal rights group, which has closed its account with GoDaddy and is asking others to follow suit.
The misfortune of some makes the happiness of others, when NameCheap a competitor of GoDaddy, was fast enough taking advantage and offering transfers of .com, .net and .org from GoDaddy to them for $4.99- and 20% of the process going to SaveTheElephants.com. Namecheap ended up raising $20,433-
Bart Becht to Step Down
After spending more than a decade building Reckitt Benckiser Group into a household-products powerhouse, Chief Executive Bart Becht said he will retire later this year.
I will continue to be passionate about the business until August 31, he said on Thursday
The news surprised shareholders and drove the company shares down by 7.5%. The worry was visible in the market Thursday. In London Reckitt’s shares fell 251 pence to 3,115 pence. Reckitt’s steep decline sliced roughly $3 billion off the company’s value, which now totals $37 billion.
Becht will be succeeded by Rakesh Kapoor who has been with Reckitt since 1987 and currently sits on the group’s executive committee as executive vice-president of global category development.
To discover few major brands powered by Reckitt Benckiser, please visit my previous post here or search the brands A to Z on the company’s official site.
