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Vendor Exclusivity: Don't Lock Yourself In10:26 AM EST Mon. May. 24, 2010
The battle for solution providers to become more exclusive with certain vendors has come to this: Even when you play by all the rules, sometimes it’s still not enough.
Case in point: Earlier this year a large multinational solution provider had a big opportunity with a client that included new servers, storage, software and more. As the solution provider had done hundreds of times in the past, he went to register a portion of the deal with the largest vendor included in the solution. But this time, instead of a quick approval, he got an unexpected call back.
“They said, ‘Hang on, what about [networking products]? And can you register your VMware through [our] OEM rather than with VMware direct?’ ” said the solution provider CEO, who asked not to be named. He told the vendor that this specific client was a legacy customer of another networking vendor and that it normally registers virtualization directly with VMware.
“They said if you’re not going to do all four of those lines, we’re not giving you the storage and server registration. We told them that we were already displacing another [server and storage] with this solution, but that we have to be receptive to what the client wants. We can’t force [your products] on them.”
According to the solution provider CEO, the vendor’s field sales rep told him that he was going to give the deal registration to another partner who was willing to register its products across the board to ensure the vendor had full visibility with that client.
“It’s gotten very sticky, very uncomfortable that that’s the type of approach we see,” said the CEO. “They were pretty honest that it’s the way it’s been dictated to them, that if they can’t find a partner to offer a total [one-vendor] solution in the data center, a solution that used to be just server and storage, they’ll find someone else. They made it known that they’re supposed to get a banner to fly across all of those areas.”
In another example, the same solution provider said he was asked to rescind a registered deal that already had been approved because he wasn’t selling a vendor’s products across the board. The vendor wanted another partner that was willing to do so.
Clearly, the battle lines are being drawn. As more vendors offer products in a broader range of technology areas, those vendors are expecting VARs to choose sides. Several solution providers said the outcome of this struggle could have a decidedly negative impact on the channel’s effectiveness to serve customers.
NEXT: M&A Fuels Exclusivity Frenzy
M&A Fuels Exclusivity Frenzy
Hewlett-Packard buys 3Com with an eye toward taking a bigger bite out of the networking market. Cisco Systems gets into the blade server game with an intent to grab share from HP. Oracle buys Sun Microsystems and promises an end-to-end hardware-software solutions stack.
Much of the recent acquisition activity among IT superpowers has been aimed at providing one-stop solutions, with a larger base of loyal VARs selling those solutions across the board.
Vendors, of course, have always wanted their solution provider partners to refuse to represent or invest in competitive offerings. But the consolidation and economic turmoil reshaping the competitive IT landscape today has made it a more pressing issue for vendors and solution providers.
Many partners insist that taking the 100 percent vendor exclusivity path is a Faustian pact that will ultimately lead to financial ruin.
“I think any VAR/consulting firm/systems integrator that is worth a darn would be silly to get into any exclusive relationship with any vendor,” said Rand Morimoto, president of Convergent Computing, an Oakland, Calif.-based solution provider. “In the 25 years I’ve had this company, every vendor has come and gone, most out of business or absorbed into another organization or brand, such as 3Com, Banyan, Compaq and others just changing focus.”
What was “in” a decade ago is never “in” 10 years later, and if business owners bank on a changing marketplace, it just sets them up to be exclusive with a vendor that is now out of favor, not the thing customers want, Morimoto added. “Vendor exclusivity is what brings down a good percentage of small and medium consulting firms/VARs as the vendor brings the consulting firm down with them,” he said.
With that in mind, CRN provides an in-depth analysis of the exclusivity pressure solution providers feel in various technology segments.
NEXT: Coming To The Dance With HP
Coming To The Dance With HP
HP isn’t about to go on record as saying that it demands exclusivity from its channel partners -- quite the opposite, in fact. And HP’s partners aren’t exactly bolting for the exits, even if some say the pressure to sell the full HP data center stack is as strong as it’s ever been.
“Listen, it’s always easier when you have a relationship that’s quote-unquote exclusive. But I don’t think our view is that the world has to be exclusive. We’re very comfortable in a co-opetive environment and have been for a very long time,” said HP CEO Mark Hurd in an interview with CRN earlier this year.
David Donatelli, general manager of HP’s Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking unit, reprised that statement in April, going so far as to declare that “there will be no pressure exerted” on HP partners to pick sides in the computing giant’s growing feud with Cisco, “other than us offering great products.”
That sounds pretty good for solution providers looking to keep their vendors honest and competing for partner business. Knowing how the hard-charging Hurd and Donatelli operate, however, it also sounds a bit too good to be true.
For a start, Hurd is up-front about describing HP channel partners as “an extension of the HP sales force.” HP’s new Emerging Growth Accounts program fires up partners with “a Dell attack program, a Sun attack program and an IBM attack program,” according to Marc Sarazin, executive vice president of sales and marketing at HP partner AdvizeX Technologies, Burlington, Mass.
And when it comes to Cisco, the networking giant that Hurd and Co. has squarely in its sights, some partners have made it clear that they’re 100 percent on HP’s side. Sarazin said AdvizeX “recently made a strategic decision to go to market with HP networking and not Cisco.” Other HP partners aren’t as happy about playing the exclusivity game. They say there is a lot of unwanted pressure on them to go into customer engagements with the total HP portfolio or not at all. One HP partner in the Northeast who asked not to be named also had a deal registration kicked over to another solution provider earlier this year because his company bid with non-HP products in a data center project.
Simon Palmer, president of Tustin, Calif.-based HP partner STA, said “no manufacturer out there should push exclusivity,” yet offered a different way of looking at the issue: “But they can earn it.”
“I think HP’s doing a good job of acknowledging that option for choice in the market,” Palmer said. “Quite honestly, as a solution provider in front of the customer you can appear biased when you’re not offering a choice. You present a more balanced view when you present a broader view,” he said.
Palmer touched on the notion of STA being “an extension of the HP sales force,” saying it’s a useful idea but one that shouldn’t be taken too far. “We can act as an extension of their sales force,” he said. “But we are different companies run with different metrics. And sometimes those models and metrics aren’t going to add up when laid out side by side. And that’s where you have to be an adult and say, ‘Hey guys, this just isn’t going to work.’ ”
The main code Palmer lives by when working with vendors like HP and others is to follow through on what he has said he’ll do. “We have very specific rules of engagement with our sales force,” he said. “We don’t flip at the last minute if the customer wants a different brand after we’ve brought in HP or another vendor. You have to recognize that there is serious competition at the manufacturer level. We’ve always been very up-front with manufacturers that whomever we come to the dance with, we’ll leave with.” —Damon Poeter
NEXT: Cloud Computing’s Carrot
Cloud Computing’s Carrot
In this still-evolving market, some cloud vendors want to take control right away and are dangling the exclusivity carrot in front of solution providers, promising added incentives for those that sign on the exclusive dotted line. So far, few solution providers are taking the bait.
“The cloud space is still so small that the vendors feel they have control of the market,” said Eric Berridge, co-founder of New York-based cloud solution provider Bluewolf. “It’s the customers that control the market. Period. But that could change.”
To assert that control, some cloud vendors -- which solution providers wouldn’t specifically name -- push for exclusivity with their stable of solution providers. Berridge said, however, that in many cases vendors might not have to push too hard. Some relationships are relatively exclusive by nature and vendors and solution providers enter into an almost unwritten agreement. Bluewolf is in a unique position in that it’s a major Salesforce.com provider but is still free to work with other vendors, he said. For example, the company works with Oracle on the database side but would think twice before signing on with a competing pure CRM vendor other than Salesforce.com.
“If all of a sudden I told [Salesforce.com] I was going to build an Oracle on demand practice … they would see it as a break of trust,” Berridge said, adding that while Salesforce.com isn’t forcing Bluewolf into exclusivity, it is fairly inherent. The continual addition of features and modules on the part of Salesforce.com would make it difficult for Bluewolf to align itself with a different vendor. “We want to keep our focus,” he added.
Some cloud VARs have benefited from playing the exclusivity game. Bellevue, Wash.-based Explore Consulting was an exclusive NetSuite solution provider for years and received incentives for that agreement.
“We were exclusive, but we all just kind of outgrew the exclusivity thing,” said Jeremy DeSpain, Explore Consulting’s co-founder. “The industry grew and the space grew out of that small-niche mentality.” Now, Explore Consulting offers solutions across other platforms, has signed on with Amazon.com and is working to integrate solutions from both Amazon.com and NetSuite, DeSpain said.
“It gives us the ability to cross-sell, in this case, Amazon customers to the NetSuite platform,” he said. “We can provide better overall solutions to customers. I view it as complementary to extend out and beyond what core NetSuite functionality offers to clients.” Looking back, DeSpain said the NetSuite exclusivity was a win-win for both companies as it helped establish a strong customer loyalty, helped Explore Consulting gain experience and pushed it to becoming one of the biggest NetSuite providers.
“Being the best at one thing is better than being average at a lot of other things. It was a huge benefit early on,” DeSpain said. In the end, some solution providers vehemently believe exclusivity goes against the true meaning of cloud computing.
“We haven’t had any one company asking for exclusivity, and if they did we wouldn’t work with them. But we haven’t seen that,” said Patrick Ciccarelli, president and CEO of Varsity Technologies, a San Francisco-based cloud solution provider. “As soon as you’re exclusive, you’re breaking down the idea of this amorphous thing [the cloud] you can use on an as-needed basis.” —Andrew R. Hickey
NEXT: The Security Squeeze
The Security Squeeze
As in other areas of IT, many security solution providers are getting squeezed from all sides to commit to 100 percent exclusivity with their vendor partner.
“There’s always been pressure,” said Jim Freeman, principal and CFO of Attain Technologies, a Denver-based solution provider. “When we started our business 10 years ago, we set it up as vendor-agnostic. It’s a little hard for me to pick a solution until I know what the problem is. What’s happened over time is that we find ourselves doing more multivendor solutions so we don’t run afoul of the pressure we get from HP, CA and Cisco.”
Freeman feels he has successfully resisted the intensified vendor pressure and has remained vendor-agnostic by sticking to a model that never allows revenue from any one vendor to exceed more than 40 percent of his business. Vendors inevitably will have more leverage over the VAR once revenue starts to exceed that, he said. “If you’re 90 percent HP, you’re going to get the pressure,” said Freeman.
It also helps that he keeps almost 50 percent of his business in managed services, which enables him to be more self-sufficient and less vendor-dependent. Should Freeman become exclusively reliant on one vendor, he believes “it would make it very difficult for my recommendations to have as much credence with our customers. My credibility with the customer is gone if [vendors] need us to influence deals in their direction. It’s just not realistic in a channel model.”
Other security-focused solution providers, however, can see their way clear to submit to a vendor’s exclusivity clause if that vendor partner helps them provide a specialized or niche service to customers. Leo Bletnitsky, CEO of Las Vegas-based Las Vegas Med IT, said that GloStream, which provides electronic medical records software, demands partners uphold exclusivity by requiring them to refrain from advertising or selling competing products. Glo-Stream also requires a $36,000 entry fee for its channel program. “I’m sure if it came to their attention that we were selling competitive products, they may choose a different partner,” Bletnitsky said.
Being exclusive wasn’t a hard decision in this case because the only competing product wasn’t as strong, he said. Meanwhile, GloStream reciprocates the exclusivity clause by solely partnering with Las Vegas Med IT to sell its products in that geographic region. “It’s nice that it’s not open to everybody,” he said. “We have exclusivity from them and they have exclusivity from us.”
In this case, Bletnitsky said he was confident he was promoting the right product. If not, he was at liberty to recommend other products -- just not sell them. “If our solution is not right for the customer, I’m going to let them know. Even if we convince someone to buy something from us that isn’t the right solution, eventually they’re going to figure it out,” he said. “The client is worth a lot more than the sale.” —Stefanie Hoffman
NEXT: Riding The Software Train
Riding The Software Train
Major software vendors, including IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, have taken steps in the past year that, while not requiring solution providers to work exclusively with them, effectively requires them to devote scarce resources to one or a limited number of IT vendors. Take IBM and the certification requirements it set last year under the “Software Value Plus” program for the approximately 100,000 channel partners that resell its software, eliminating the open distribution model it had previously followed.
While many IBM software partners said that certification would help them stand out in a competitive market, there’s no disputing the fact that resellers have to devote more time and money to getting their engineers and sales representatives trained and tested.
Oracle, for its part, overhauled the Oracle PartnerNetwork program to put more emphasis on training and certifying resellers for their expertise in specific Oracle technologies and vertical industries. Those “specializations,” as Oracle calls them, aren’t required (unless a partner is seeking Platinum status), but Oracle has made it clear that certified partners would be given preference in competitive sales situations.
Microsoft has likewise altered the focus of its channel program so that partners are certified and ranked according to their business and technology “solution competencies.” And Microsoft is asking the 10,000 resellers of its Dynamics ERP and CRM applications to commit to developing extended expertise in specific vertical industries -- or step back and accept referral fees for Dynamics sales opportunities. To be fair, many smaller solution providers work exclusively with a single software vendor -- or, at most, one vendor in each product category -- so it can develop deep expertise in that vendor’s technology.
For many solution providers, such expertise is their raison d’etre and their competitive edge.
“We intentionally work with one vendor in each [technology] area,” said Ronnie Parisella, CTO of Primary Support, a New York-based solution provider that works mainly with Microsoft. “It’s very, very difficult for our people to stay up-to-date with multiple vendors,” he said, noting that just keeping on top of Microsoft’s software updates, hot fixes, Service Packs and licensing is a full-time job. Still, vendors do apply subtle and not-so-subtle pressure to try to convince solution providers to work only with them, according to Parisella.
“Vendors are always playing up their competitive differentiators,” he said, noting that SonicWall, the Internet security software vendor Primary Support works with, is big on developing spec sheets for resellers emphasizing the superiority of its products over competing products.
Said Mike Chadwick, executive vice president at Prolifics, a New York solution provider that works almost exclusively with IBM software: “We don’t feel that we could be legitimately effective in a lot of different technologies. We dedicate ourselves to one vendor and get good at it.” The pressure can be even higher at the field level when the solution provider is working on a deal with a vendor’s sales force. “They want assurances you’re not going to flip and sell competing product lines,” he said. “That’s where as a VAR you have to set the parameters up front. The solution provider must be a trusted adviser and offer [customers] the power of choice.”
For his part, Perficient President and CEO Jeffrey Davis doesn’t believe IT vendors are pushing for VAR exclusivity as much as they were, say, 10 years ago. Microsoft back then tended to work with smaller, regional resellers that exclusively sold Microsoft products, he said, and the vendor more often expected such exclusive relationships. Today Perficient works with software products from IBM, Microsoft, TIBCO, Oracle, EMC and other vendors. “They’ve accepted by necessity that a lot of their partners are not going to work exclusively with them,” Davis said. “We’ve got a bunch of clients, including some big customers, and we have some influence.”
And then there are vendors that are so confident about their products that they encourage channel partners to carry products from competitors.
NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson, during a recent earnings call, was asked by an analyst whether some newly recruited VARs had switched away from selling software from Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly Great Plains software, to exclusively carry NetSuite. Nelson nixed that idea. “I would love for [resellers] to demonstrate NetSuite side by side with Great Plains,” he said. —Rick Whiting
NEXT: No Microsoft Muscle?
No Microsoft Muscle?
Although Microsoft used to get its hackles raised over partners with Linux leanings, it’s hard to find a Microsoft partner today who’s feeling pressure to go all-in with Microsoft products. Microsoft does encourage partner “commitment,” but its partner program doesn’t place the heavy emphasis on sales performance and sell-through numbers that other vendors’ programs do. Instead, Microsoft’s partner program is designed to foster abundant services opportunities for the channel, and that has been one of the keys to its success.
“The margins on Microsoft software sales are minimal, and since most partners are focused on services, they actually have an incentive to minimize software sales as a portion of a project’s total budget,” said Paul DeGroot, an analyst with Directions On Microsoft, Kirkland, Wash. “This leaves more room for additional services, where margins and ongoing revenues are greater.”
Of course, Microsoft’s sales teams prefer working with partners that embrace the full Microsoft stack, but with the exception of Dynamics, most partner competencies aren’t based on sales performance, added DeGroot.
Traditionally, many of Microsoft’s competitors have also been partners, which makes it difficult for exclusivity to creep into the equation. Cisco is a prime example. Even after Microsoft entered the unified communications market with Office Communications Server, the two companies continued working closely together, which makes sense since many Microsoft partners are also Cisco partners. Microsoft and Cisco often trade verbal barbs about whose UC solution is better, but solution providers haven’t experienced any strong-arming from Microsoft.
“I haven’t seen Microsoft pushing partners to drop Cisco,” said Neil Brenner, vice president of converged technology at Consolidated Technologies, a Port Chester, N.Y.-based solution provider. While Microsoft’s stance today is to integrate with PBXes from the likes of Cisco and Avaya, that might not always be the case, said Brenner. “I believe at some point soon, [Office Communications Server] won’t have seamless integration with Cisco or Avaya for call control or remote call control. At that point, enterprise users would have to make the choice for a ‘go forward’ platform,” he said.
In virtualization, where Microsoft has been making incursions into VMware market strongholds, the software giant has been stressing the cost savings it offers to lure VMware customers but hasn’t demanded that its solution providers drop VMware altogether. Microsoft, in its partner marketing efforts, has targeted areas of complexity in VMware products that are causing problems for customers. In March, Microsoft and Citrix Systems unveiled the “Rescue for VMware VDI” promotion, which lets customers trade in their VMware View software licenses for the same number of Microsoft VDI Standard Suite subscription and Citrix XenDesktop VDI Edition annual licenses, for free.
Microsoft’s increasing focus on interconnected systems also runs contrary to the notion of vendor exclusivity. Microsoft says XML is now at the core of all its product development efforts, and Jean Paoli, co-creator of XML, is a Microsoft employee. “Microsoft has focused a lot on interoperability in recent years, and you can’t do that and insist that people use only your products,” said DeGroot. “In general, it’s probably a good strategy and gained them more than they lost, in the sense that it has let them penetrate accounts where rip and replace wasn’t an option.” —Kevin McLaughlin
NEXT: Pass The Chips
Pass The Chips
Consolidation and increased aggressiveness among IT giants may have led to corresponding pressure for exclusivity in some areas, but one market where the pressure may actually be easing a bit is at the very beginning of the IT supply chain.
Microprocessor giant Intel had its knuckles rapped hard by antitrust regulators in the European Union and elsewhere in 2009. The chip maker had to pay a $1.45 billion fine over a ruling by European Commission regulators that it had engaged in anticompetitive marketing practices to the detriment of rival Advanced Micro Devices (Intel is appealing the May 13, 2009, decision).
It’s silly to think that the EU ruling or a U.S. Federal Trade Commission complaint and other legal proceedings have put any dent in Intel’s desire to win every bit of business for itself and itself alone. But there’s a sense among industry sources that Intel these days is walking a very careful line so as not to give the impression it is leaning too hard on OEM and white-box partners.
After all, the EU ruling explicitly found that Intel pressured computer manufacturers and other partners with rebates that hinged on whether a company’s product mix was almost entirely Intel-based and, in some cases, exclusively Intel-based. An antitrust complaint filed against Intel by the New York Attorney General last November detailed communications between Intel executives and their counterparts at Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other companies that raise serious questions about what Intel did to pressure partners for exclusivity and the large amounts of money it was allegedly willing to pay for it.
In the white-box channel, it’s been tougher to get a bead on how much Intel ever threw its weight around to achieve exclusivity, if the chip giant did indeed do that with smaller partners. At the time of the EU ruling, Todd Swank, vice president of marketing at Northern Computer Technologies (Nor-Tech), a Burnsville, Minn.-based custom-system builder, called the accusation that Intel misused its rebate program “hooey.”
“AMD and Intel have similar programs,” said Swank, whose company does business with both chip makers. “Both give rebates to go after specific products. But to give money to not do something -- I’ve been doing marketing in the U.S. for 10 years, and I’ve not seen anything like that.”
On the other hand, another system builder who asked not to be named said Intel had been known to “strong-arm” system builders. Interestingly, that system builder also said that in recent months Intel has “gone out of its way to be more channel-friendly.”
One key player in all of this that appears ready to accept that Intel knows its bounds when it comes to pursuing exclusivity is AMD itself. The smaller chip maker settled its own antitrust suit against Intel last year with the provision that Intel not engage in unspecified, anticompetitive “business practices.” Of course, now another Intel rival -- graphics chip maker Nvidia -- has its own legal beef with Intel, so all of this may be far from over. —Damon Poeter
NEXT: Storage: Back Me Up
Storage: Back Me Up
Vendor exclusivity in the storage market comes not from vendor pressure, but instead from loyalty incentives and from solution providers’ own desire for strong partner relationships, some solution providers say.
Incentives to be exclusive are more likely to come from the top server vendors, particularly IBM and HP, both of which also sell a full range of storage products.
Lilien Systems, a Larkspur, Calif.-based HP-exclusive solution provider, gets up to 95 percent of its storage revenue from HP-related sales and services and the only time it receives pressure to be exclusive is when HP servers are involved, said Dhruv Gulati, Lilien’s executive vice president. “HP can’t legally pressure us,” Gulati said. “However, they can offer a carrot, which is more money if we sell the larger HP portfolio, and a stick, which is a threat to pull a registered deal.”
Lilien’s sales of NetApp hardware and CommVault software do not impact its role as a trusted adviser to HP clients as far as HP is concerned, Gulati said. “We’re a trusted adviser because of our loyalty and our relationship with our customers,” he said.
Being nearly exclusive with HP can be a mixed blessing when it comes to other opportunities, Gulati said. For instance, NetApp and its customers often prefer to work with an incumbent solution provider that is more committed to the NetApp line, he said.
Dave Butler, president of Enterprise Computing Solutions, a Mission Viejo, Calif.-based HP-dedicated solution provider, said a close relationship with HP eliminates any questions about its dedication when it engages with the vendor’s field sales team.
Sometimes vendor exclusivity can be by choice, as in the case of Davenport Group, a St. Paul-based solution provider that decided on its own to hitch its star to Eden Prairie, Minn., storage vendor Compellent when that company launched in early 2004. Sonia St. Charles, CEO of Davenport, said it saw in Compellent technology that was unavailable from any other vendor. Compellent also had solid funding, and was founded by executives of another long-term vendor, Xiotech. And it was 100 percent channel, St. Charles said.
It also helped to know that Compellent planned to offer an IPO in a short time, St. Charles said. “In 2007, before they went IPO, we made a pretty heavy investment in our Web site and marketing to take advantage of the buzz from their IPO,” she said. “So when people Googled Compellent, they came to our Web site.” —Joseph F. Kovar
NEXT: The Cisco Machine
The Cisco Machine
Is there pressure on VARs from Cisco to sell Cisco products and solution sets exclusively or near-exclusively?
“Ha. Does a bear ... er, well, is the sky blue?” said one incredulous Cisco Gold partner who asked that his name not be used in print. Thinking about his answer a bit more, the longtime VAR paused and posed it another way. “Well, there’s always pressure. This is the Cisco machine we’re talking about, and they’ve always been high on making sure you’re doing what [they need you] to do to keep the beast full,” the VAR said. “But I’m not sure I could point you to any specific instances. We’ve had a good year with Cisco and I doubt the pressure is any worse for us than anybody else. Not this year, anyway, with so much else happening. They’ve put the brakes on some of the pressure stuff.”
The past year in the networking space has been framed by big acquisitions -- Cisco-Tandberg, Avaya-Nortel, HP-3Com -- and a bigger rivalry, that of HP and Cisco, which has been full-on in the channel since at least the 2009 Cisco Partner Summit in Boston. It was there where Cisco North American channel chief Wendy Bahr declared, “We are competing with HP. Period. End. It is competition.” At the time, many VARs that sold both HP and Cisco feared that price wars and pressure would bleed the channel dry in the interests of clashing vendor titans.
HP certainly didn’t dial down the rhetoric on the neworking side in 2010. At its HP Americas Partner Conference in Las Vegas in April, many HP executives rallied the VAR troops in favor of giving Cisco its fiercest competition in years, thanks to HP’s stepped-up focus on networking and its acquisition of 3Com.
At the Cisco Partner Summit last month, however, a different mood pervaded. Gone were the brash, bully pulpit declarations of war against HP, and instead came a calmer tone of thanks and a gentler urging of partner loyalty.
“There was a lot of backlash that came from Cisco saying ‘game on’ last year,” said Peter Belyea, vice president of Teracai, an East Syracuse, N.Y.-based solution provider, in an interview at the Summit. “I think now they realized that they don’t have play like that. They can set the strategy and focus on what’s important.”
Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers told reporters at the Partner Summit that Cisco “doesn’t focus on other companies. We focus on market transitions.” Bahr acknowledged to CRN that the 2009 Summit was loaded with anti-HP sentiment, but that Partner Summit 2010 was about “market transitions” and that Cisco was “so busy with its partners, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Keith Goodwin, Cisco senior vice president for worldwide channels, said earlier this year that the company’s current philosophy is to earn partner loyalty. “The key word there is ‘earn.’ We’re not there demanding it, we’re not there focused on ‘you have to be loyal,’ it’s about earning it,” Goodwin said. “Our view of how data centers virtualize going forward has the network in the center. HP has a different view of that. We want to share in a compelling way with our partners and inspire them to invest in our vision.”
In discussions since, executives from both Cisco and HP have publicly downplayed any notion of pressure on VARs to choose one or the other.
“We like people to sell HP solutions, and we will incent them to do so,” said HP Networking Senior Vice President and General Manager Marius Haas in a May discussion with CRN. “But we’re not going to say, ‘You need to do one or the other.’ We’re not asking for that. We believe that the market will choose and I think the partner community will follow what the market looks for.”
Some of HP’s competitive promotions, however, have been more aggressive than Cisco’s. HP’s ProCurve unit, now part of HP Networking, launched a promotion in October 2009 called ProCurve Accelerated training to lure Cisco VARs to ProCurve with the promise of fast-tracked certifications for HP networking based on the Cisco certifications they held. “Double your knowledge without shrinking your wallet,” read the promotion, which HP touted as saving partners $12,000 over what they’d pay in ProCurve training if they didn’t hold qualifying Cisco certifications.
Andrew Cadwell, vice president of sales at INX, a Houston-based solution provider, said that INX’s loyalty to a few strategic vendors -- such as Cisco and NetApp -- has helped it stay out of HP vs. Cisco-related vendor loyalty skirmishes. “We don’t have that same pressure as some of our similar-sized competitors. We sell platforms, such as with Cisco, VMware and NetApp, and we don’t substitute HP,” Cadwell said. “But I’m not saying it’s not out there. I’ve heard it’s out there.”
Most recently, Cisco has had other issues to worry about than HP, namely its own supply chain shortages that, according to Cadwell, have affected much of the bread-and-butter routing and switching Cisco business and especially product lines like Nexus, which are crucial to Cisco-led data center deployments.
Things have loosened up and Cisco representatives have been helpful to INX, Cadwell said, but the fact that Cisco’s top executives didn’t make definitive public statements about the scope of the supply chain issues while they were happening meant “we didn’t have anything we could point customers to to set expectations.”
It’s been less severe for other Cisco VARs.
Ryan Halper, president of Seattle-based Cynnex Networks, and several other partners said a few recent Cisco programs have been good at inspiring loyalty without forcing it. The one initiative many Cisco VARs pointed to was Cisco’s three-year, zero-percent financing program, which was unveiled in January 2010. “It gives us an advantage,” Halper said. “I think we still have to win in the traditional sales process, but it does let us close deals faster.”
But don’t think for a second that the rivalry between the two vendors doesn’t run deep, VARs said. Adam Steinhoff, president and CEO of Steinhoff Consulting, North Palm Beach, Fla., who has de-emphasized his Cisco business in favor of cheaper alternatives, said he feels it in even small deals. “I have to admit that I brought that point to them about six months ago, and if I mention HP, magic happens,” said Steinhoff, describing discussions with Cisco executives. “What I’d prefer is let’s not jump through hoops every time. I shouldn’t have to go and get a price deviation every time I need a product.”
Dan Serpico, president of FusionStorm, Pasadena, Calif., said he hasn’t seen any more aggression than usual from Cisco or HP, both of which FusionStorm partners with. “There is a race here among these technology companies to own as much of the data center spend,” he said. “But I don’t think that is any different than it was five years ago when there wasn’t yet a cloud to slice up. Cisco provides great technology and meaningful partner relationships for us. For HP, it’s also true. It’s also true of IBM and others we partner with.” —Chad Berndtson
NEXT: The Final Word On Exclusivity
The Final Word On Exclusivity
In the end, several VARs said they have been frustrated by the amount of resources spent dealing with vendor exclusivity, resources that could have been better spent serving customers. In the first example we gave of the conflict, the solution provider wasn’t able to get better pricing for selling one vendor across the board and had to bring in technical staff to find tertiary products to get the opportunity to get to a price point he was able to compete with, he said.
“It’s a bummer. It’s not put us in a good position,” the solution provider CEO said. “It creates a couple of issues. [Vendors] can’t dictate that [end users] have to go homogenous to a solution. [No one] should be doing that. You’re doing the client a disservice ramming it down their throat.
“Exclusivity programs also push end users to choose a partner that they might not be comfortable with,” he said. “Just because you fly [a vendor’s] banner doesn’t mean the client won’t see a degradation in support. [A vendor] might win the battle, but they’ll lose the war that way. Do you really want your name associated with a partner the [end user] didn’t want and is not comfortable with? Do you really need to be so zealous there? If your solution is the best and an industry standard, that’s great. But let’s evolve together and not force it. It’s creating unproductive selling behavior.”
Finally, if you think VARs face a challenge trying to balance the needs of customers with the requests of their vendor partners, imagine the pressure a distributor faces when billions of dollars are at stake. Greg Spierkel, CEO of Ingram Micro, believes vendor exclusivity is a nonissue for about 80 percent of vendors that have a narrow portfolio of offerings. But that doesn’t mean the other 20 percent don’t create pressure that’s felt across the channel. Solution providers should fight for their right to sell best-of-breed solutions to customers, regardless of what vendor that is, Spierkel said, because a vendor’s offerings might be the best in one technology area, but not in another.
“You may feel this piece is not quite as good as with other parts of the portfolio. That’s a fair thing to say. Then it gets to be a choice,” he said.
Vendors that strive for an “all-in strategy may lose some business because VARs won’t or can’t go exclusive with them,” Spierkel said.
“There’s always risk if a vendor struggles with part of its portfolio or if you don’t have something else in your portfolio. [A vendor] might do well for three years and all of a sudden they’re not the best in networking or computing or storage. Or they might struggle with supply. Then you’re caught,” Spierkel said. “I’m not a proponent of exclusivity to the utmost. You have to be careful. Everybody should always deal with the No. 1 or No. 2 player in a sector. If you carry two, great. If you carry three, maybe that’s overkill. But you shouldn’t be beholden to one. You might have to potentially miss some opportunities.”


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CHINA: Nissan launches new high-end model ahead of other countries
Nissan Motor has launched a new model of its high-end Teana [Maxima, Cefiro] sedan in China, a world premiere that underlines the increasing weight of the Chinese market for the Japanese automaker.
According to Nissan officials speaking to Kyodo News, this is the first time the company launched a new car model in China ahead of all other markets.
Sales of Nissan cars, as well as those of other Japanese automakers, took a big plunge in China after widespread anti-Japanese protests in September last year over a bilateral territorial dispute in the East China Sea.
The sharpest decline came in October when Nissan's new car sales in China shrank more than 40% year on year.
For the whole of 2012, Nissan's car sales in China fell 5.3% to 1,181,500.
This is the first time the automaker posted negative growth in car sales in China since 2003 when it set up a local joint venture and began earnestly to try to penetrate the Chinese market.
Nissan has applied to its local authorities for permission to add 25,000 square metres of capacity to its Sunderland plant in North-East England....
Nissan will offer a newly-developed Cummins V8 turbo diesel in its next generation full-size pick-up in the US....
- CEO says Citroen wants to be quirky again
- Volvo's engine and platform independence progress
- Advanced tech previews from OEMs - PLDB
- Indian summer for SsangYong - ANALYSIS
- ANALYSIS: VW's self-defeating defeat devices
- Jaguar Land Rover expands engine plant capacity
- Takata manipulated test results back to 2000
- Prosecutors eye VW workers for emissions tax evade
- Volkswagen making progress on diesel emissions fix
- Chinese explosion, investments, lower JLR profit
- Global light vehicle instrumentation and cockpits market- forecasts to 2030
- Global light vehicle OE shock absorbers market- forecasts to 2030
- Global light vehicle electronic braking market- forecasts to 2030
- Global light vehicle OE mirrors market- forecasts to 2030
- Global light vehicle roof systems market- forecasts to 2030

domain: news


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Exports remain steady but business confidence weakens
EXPORTERS’ ORDER books remain resilient in the face of turmoil in the euro zone and slowing overseas economies, according to the Republic’s leading business lobby group.
A survey published today by the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (Ibec) shows that business confidence weakened in the Republic over the last three months.
However, the study also shows that exporters are in a better position than businesses that only trade in the domestic economy.
According to the organisation’s economist, Fergal O’Brien, business will remain challenging in the opening months of 2012.
“The ongoing turmoil in the euro zone has clearly taken its toll on Irish business over the past three months, but the outlook for exports remains fairly strong as order books of this sector are particularly resilient,” Mr O’Brien said.
“Overall, business confidence levels have fallen sharply since the autumn, however, with the majority of businesses now having a negative outlook for both the wider economy and their own business situation.”
The survey shows that all major exporting sectors, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, information technology and food and drink, are positive about the next quarter.
Both the food and drink and information technology industries expect export sales to increase over the next three months, the survey shows.
Medical devices, information technology and pharmaceutical businesses were also more likely to be planning to hire new staff in the coming quarter.
Overall, 24 per cent of the 400 businesses surveyed expected to increase their work forces over the next three months. However, overall business confidence in the Republic remains weak.
The survey shows that confidence fell to minus 28 this quarter from minus 13 in the previous three-month period. Business people are even more downbeat about the next quarter, with confidence reading at minus 29.
A minus figure in the survey indicates that Ibec received more negative than positive answers to each issue raised in the survey. The greater the number, the more negative responses it received.
The results are based on responses from 400 Ibec members.


text: Boeing's Spokane plant may go The Boeing Co. is studying the possibility of closing or selling its 550-employee Spokane plant, in its latest move to adjust to falling demand for new commercial aircraft. Airline travel plunged after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11. Because airlines need fewer planes, some Boeing production rates could fall as much as 50 percent, the company said in a statement released yesterday. So executives are studying whether to hold on to their plant in Spokane County, where workers build floor panels, air-control-system ducting, some flight-deck components and other items from composite materials. The company expects to complete its review by the first week in February. At that point, it will decide whether to sell the plant, close it or look at other possibilities, said Sue Grimm, the plant's general manager. The company has already warned nearly 10 percent of its Spokane-based workers they could be laid off, Grim said. No more bags for paper maker Port Townsend Paper Corp. is closing its bag-manufacturing operations and laying off 105 employees, including 89 in Port Townsend. The remaining 16 employees are in Portland. The layoffs and plant closings, announced Monday, will take effect in 60 days. Those moves, coupled with the closing of its Richmond, B.C., bag plant earlier this year, take Port Townsend Paper out of the bag business. In a statement, company President John Begley said, "I cannot blame anything but a nationwide decline in the paper bag market." He said consolidation among grocery-store chains and a shift in consumer preferences from paper to plastic cut demand for paper bags. Bag-making machines in Port Townsend and Richmond will be sold to a Michigan company, and equipment at Portland will be sold to Longview Fibre. Port Townsend Paper will have close to 400 employees remaining in Port Townsend. Big loss posted by US Airways ARLINGTON, Va. -- US Airways yesterday reported a third-quarter loss of $766 million, far worse than analysts had expected. The loss, which amounts to $11.42 a share, takes into account the $331 million the airline received from the government as part of a congressional bailout of the industry. Without that money, the airline would have lost $1.1 billion. In the third quarter last year, US Airways reported a loss of $30 million, or 45 cents a share. A Ford in driver's seat again DEARBORN, Mich. --William Clay Ford Jr. yesterday ascended from chairman to president and chief executive officer of the Ford Motor Co., the first family member at the helm in 22 years. Former CEO Jacques Nasser was ousted Monday after controversy over eroding sales, vehicle quality and the Firestone tire crisis. Pyramid alehouse for Bay Area Seattle-based Pyramid Breweries Inc. plans to open an alehouse in the Bay Area community of Walnut Creek, Calif. The restaurant and brewery, due to open in the first quarter of 2002, will be the company's third; it already has alehouses in Seattle (near Safeco Field) and Berkeley, Calif.


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Thailand has removed the seeds and oils extracted from some cannabis plants from its list of controlled substances
Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul made the announcement in an effort to boost the country’s economy.
The new regulation would effectively allow the use of hemp oil and seeds as ingredients in drugs, food and cosmetics products, reports the Bangkok Post.
Hemp is defined by the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) as a cannabis sativa L plant with less than 0.5% of THC by weight in its flowers and stems, and no more than 0.3% of THC by weight in its seeds.
But ONCB secretary-general Niyom Termsrisuk warned Thais they are still not allowed to grow or possess cannabis and hemp plants.
He said: “Marijuana and hemp are still Class 5 narcotics, and their cultivation, import, export, sale, possession and/or consumption without permits are illegal.”
Most Asian nations have strict drug laws, but there are signs attitudes towards medical cannabis are softening – opening up investment opportunities in the region.
In July Thailand’s new government announced it is prioritising the development of a medical cannabis industry.
The coalition government, elected in March and headed by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, released a policy document stating: “The study and technological development of marijuana, hemp, and other medicinal herbs should be sped up for the medical industry to create economic opportunity and income for the people.”


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According to a report released last week by consumer research platform Attest, roughly 60% of Americans are struggling to afford food as price hikes to offset inflation limit what and how much they can buy and where they shop.
Recognizing that many consumers feel squeezed and facing volume shortfalls as a result, CPG makers and retailers are rethinking their marketing strategies with some opting for more promotions and others playing the long-game and holding prices steady even if they lose market share in the short term.
In this episode of FoodNavigator-USA’s Soup-To-Nuts Podcast, Attest Chief Commercial Officer Todd Fellerman shares insights from the consumer research company’s report published Sept. 13 ‘Facing up to food insecurity: A guide to changing consumer behavior for F&B brands and retailers.’ He explains who is struggling to afford food, how this impacts their shopping habits and loyalty. He also shines a light on how people across socio-economic and regions approach cooking in the current economic environment and what they are looking for from brands as they balance both their budgets and increasingly busy lives. And finally, he offers tips for attracting and maintaining consumers in the current landscape.
Inflation may be slowing, but grocery prices aren’t dropping
According to data released last week by the Labor Department, US consumer prices for food consumed at home ticked up 0.2% in August over the prior month – a touch slower than the 0.3% month-over-month increase in July but a reversal from the slight decline to flat rates month-over-moth since February.
These numbers, while still not where most would like them to be, are far lower than the double-digit year-over-year increases of last summer – suggesting that the economy is slowly recovering as commodity costs and inputs moderate slightly. But, as Fellerman notes, there is a lag in the response to inflation across the landscape, including in consumers’ pay checks and the prices they see on store shelves.
“Where overall inflation feels like it’s slowed down, we’ve seen that when it comes down to paying at the pump paying at the grocery store, a lot of consumers are still struggling, and on the whole, people are having to make those hard choices,” he said.
Shoppers are buying less food, sacrificing nutrition for calorie density
Fellerman says for grocery shoppers, those hard choices often center around less quantity and lower quality food.
“[Consumers are] seeing that their dollar is not going as far at the register, and they’re trying to find way to [stretch it],” Fellerman said, adding, “the other interesting thing we found within the research speaks to the fact that nutrition for certain folks in certain segments of the US is becoming less and less of a thing because they’re saying, ‘I don’t want to look at nutrition. I’m trying to just find a way to keep that food on the table in the most frequent way possible.’”
While Attest’s research shows the impact of inflation and higher grocery prices is hitting consumers across the board with less than half of the population reporting they can comfortably afford food, Fellerman notes that the brunt of the impact is falling on Gen X and less affluent shoppers.
Based on these findings, Fellerman advises brands and retailers to tailor their marketing and promotional efforts regionally and generationally. For example, Attest suggests in the report that Millennials, who have the highest shopping frequency, are most responsive to in-store promotions, while more affluent shoppers who are willing to visit multiple stores to find deals will respond well to coupons.
Consumers continue to eat at home, engage with videos for inspiration
Fellerman notes a silverling for grocery stores and CPG brands from consumers tightening their food budgets is that more people are cooking at home and cooking from scratch – creating opportunities for retailers and manufacturers to engage with shoppers around the joy of cooking.
“We actually see that cooking at home [is] something that almost every stripe of an American – socioeconomically, regionally – are doing, and that is a positive in some sense,” Fellerman said.
Fellerman says one of the best ways for retailers and food brands to tap into consumers’ joy of cooking is through digital recipes and video tutorials on platforms like TikTok to teach consumers how to use products and make enjoyable meals at home.
In addition, he calls out the power of prepared foods as a way to draw in younger shoppers who feel strapped for time and older shoppers who have more income.
Offer inspiration within reach
On that note, Fellerman also cautions brands and retailers to make recipes accessible not just from a technical standpoint, but also a financial one, which might mean incorporating ways for consumers to stretch a meal or prepare something that is nutritious but also affordable.
He also recommends brands diversify where they advertise and offer promotions as a head nod to consumers shopping across channels and buying food places where they previously might not have shopped.
To learn more about how the economy is influencing consumer behavior and how retailers and brands in turn should adjust innovation and marketing strategies, visit askattest.com and check out the full report released this week: ‘Facing up to food insecurity: A guide to changing consumer behavior for F&B brands and retailers.’


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Japanese big companys' sentiment down in Q4: survey
TOKYO, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Large Japanese companys' sentiment in the fourth quarter of 2013 was down for the first time in a year amid expectations that the economy would slow following the sales tax hike next April, a government survey said Tuesday.
Those firms capitalized more than 1 billion yen logged a confidence index of 8.3 in the October to December period, down from 12.0 for the three months through September, according to a joint survey by the Finance Ministry and Cabinet Office,
Sentiment at manufacturers declined to 9.7 from 15.2, while that at nonmanufacturers dropped to 7.5 from 10.4, the survey showed.
Looking ahead, large firms expect business conditions to sharply deteriorate after the country's consumption tax hike from the current 5 percent to 8 percent next April, with the index at minus 4.1 for the April-June period.
But a Finance Ministry official predicted, as those large firms believe consumer spending and investment will temporarily expand before the tax hike, the index may stand at 11.8 in the first quarter of 2014.


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The brand new Ascend P7 is largely an evolutionary update of last year’s Ascend P6, but that’s not a bad thing at all, especially since Huawei brought enough improvements to the table to make it worth upgrading.
Huawei has very quietly released its next mid-tier smartphone, the Ascend P6S. However the P6S appears to be only a slight upgrade to last year’s Ascend P6.
It looks like its not just the big manufacturers that are gearing up for KitKat. Huawei has now announced that the Ascend P6 will be making the jump from Android 4.2.2 over to Android 4.4 KitKat this January.
Consumers in the UK can now get their hands on Huawei’s latest flagship, the Ascend P6. Does the phone have what it takes to stand out against better known Android devices from rivals like HTC, Samsung and Sony?
Hot on the heels of the Google Play Edition Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One handsets, Huawei has announced that it too is interested in releasing a stock Android version of its Ascend P6.
This is a list of what we consider to be the best dual-SIM smartphones that belong in the world of Android. Take a look and see which one fits you best.
Well, that didn’t last long. Mere weeks after Huawei declared the Ascend P6 the world’s thinnest smartphone, UMEOX, a China-based smartphone manufacturer, dethroned it with the X5.
This week, Facebook asked Samsung for a phone, Snapdragon 800 crushed the benchmarks, new phones arrived from Huawei and HTC, while Samsung impressed us with the Ativ Q.
Got a Rubik’s Cube you just can’t figure out? Huawei thinks there’s no better way to showcase the power of a smartphone than by having its processor drive a Lego Mindstorms machine capable of solving the puzzle for you.
Why is battery life the only area where the smartphone user experience is regressing? Why can’t we have more phones like the Butterfly s, and fewer phones like the Ascend P6?


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By Oakland Local Contributor CB Smith-Dahl
There is a tradition in the African-American community (and some others) known as “Testifying.” When you have found the answer, you are expected to share it with the community – to tell the story of your personal journey from faithless to faithful, from sick to healed or from oppression to freedom.
In her book, “Sistah Vegan,” A. Breeze Harper collects a series of articles by black women about their journeys – having switched to a plant-based diet. Most of them are first-person testimonies; all of them make great food for thought.
Lantern Books – a small company that specializes in books about spirituality, natural healing, animal rights and vegetarianism/veganism – released the book earlier this year. It has been well received, mostly by Vegan advocates who are mostly non-African American
For the complete story visit here.
For more news visit Oakland Local here.


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Some of you might remember that Apple announced its intention to get the service to identify songs Shazam in the month of December last year. Police did not release the amount you paid for the service, but reports indicate that this transaction has cost Apple about US $ 400 million. Closed Apple’s official acquisition of this, the company announced that the service Shazam will now be free of ads for all users.
Lets Shazam users identify songs that are broadcast from around them by listening to them. This service displays advertisements in the arena as a suitable means to only generate profits. However, after this service has become now owned by Apple, they don’t need to get profit from ads. So, I decided Apple make the Shazam application is free of ads for all users to be able to continue to recognize the songs that are broadcast from around them using the app and without any inconvenience.
Shazam is very popular where that app has been downloaded more than a million times all over the world. It is used more than 20 million times every day by users who want to select songs.
Some may think that he can now tell Apple to cancel the application Shazam for the Android after it became under the ownership, but will not be the case. Shazam for Android will continue to face, and not only that, he won’t know without it also ads to the users.
The post Shazam won’t know the ads anymore for all users after it became owned by Apple appeared first on electronic.


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Yesterday USDA’s FSIS issued a public health alert for ready-to-eat chicken and pork tamales because they contain recalled diced tomatoes in puree that have been recalled by the producer due to foreign matter contamination. The puree product is FDA regulated. The RTE tamales were produced by Tucson Tamale Wholesale Co., LLC between October 22 and November 9, 2020, and have the establishment number “EST. 45860” inside the USDA mark of inspection. The products were sold online and shipped for retail and restaurant distribution nationwide.
Tucson Tamale uncovered the issue upon identifying pieces of hard plastic in the cans of diced tomatoes that they received from their ingredients supplier. FSIS is urging consumers who purchased the product to throw them away or return them to the place of purchase.


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Shares of Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) are trading over 6% higher this week after the IT networking company reported better-than-expected fiscal Q4 earnings and revenue, sending its shares up more than 5% in premarket trading.
How Did Cisco Do in FQ4?
The software maker reported Q4 adjusted EPS of 83c, topping the consensus estimates of 82c per share, as per Refinitiv. Revenue came in at $13.10 billion, beating the analyst consensus of $12.79 billion.
Net income fell 6% year-over-year to $2.82 billion after the company’s adjusted gross margin shrank to 63.3% from 65.3% in the previous quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of 64.7%.
Cisco’s best-performing segment Secure Agile Networks, which designs data-center networking switches, contributed 46% or $6.09 billion of the total revenue, down 1% year-over-year, though above the analyst consensus of $5.86 billion.
The second-best segment, Internet for the Future, contributed $1.26 billion in revenue, down 10% from the year-ago period, and missing the consensus estimates of $1.36 billion. The Collaboration segment, which contains the web conferencing unit Webex, added $1.16 billion in the quarter, up 2% year-over-year, and topped the consensus projection of $1.10 billion.
Going forward, Cisco expects 2023 adjusted EPS in the range of $3.49 to $3.56 and revenue growth in the range of 4% to 6%. This compares with analysts’ estimates of EPS of $3.53 per share and revenue of $52.79 billion. Cisco’s revenue in the 2022 fiscal year rose by 3.4%.
For the current quarter, Cisco expects revenue growth in the range of 2% to 4%, while analysts were looking for flat growth, according to Refinitiv.
Even though Cisco’s earnings and revenue beat estimates, the San Jose, California-based company is struggling to grow rapidly as its technology peers continue to shift towards cloud and subscription softwares away from physical products.
“After a challenging April due to the COVID-related shutdowns in Shanghai … overall supply constraints began to ease slightly at the back half of the fourth quarter and continuing into the start of Q1,” said CEO Chuck Robbins during a post-earnings call.
Elazar Advisors analyst Chaim Siegel said Cisco’s guidance “was good enough because they start lapping stronger year-ago numbers. So the guide for the year and quarter are seen as a sign of confidence by the company.”
But mounting costs are expected to pose challenges for Cisco in the future as the company continues to spend more on transport and logistics to maintain a steady supply.
Citi Not Convinced
Citi analysts reiterated their Sell rating on CSCO shares, citing the company’s declining market share against rivals Arista and Juniper.
The research unit of the bank reaffirmed its price objective of $40 per share for Cisco’s stock, suggesting a downside of around 14%. Citi remains the only firm that holds a Sell rating on CSCO.
“Our view is current supply chain challenges are more of a headwind for Cisco than for its peers as peers have been ordering and building for upside to gain share from Cisco, and the share losses by Cisco are accelerating. We believe competitors have been able to procure more parts than Cisco, which is hurting Cisco’s sales and market share,” a Citi analyst wrote in a client note.
The analyst also warned investors of Cisco’s persisting challenges like tough comps while the pace of orders continues to slow.
Furthermore, a Morgan Stanley analyst reflected on Cisco’s report and said he is “leaning cautious” on the company’s results for the fiscal fourth quarter as a brief “improvement in supply creates a difficult setup on FQ1, particularly as forward ordering and deteriorating macro create a challenging setup into FY23.”
While the analyst is optimistic about the company’s Q4 results, his cautious stance on the company’s stock is based on Cisco’s tricky outlook. The analyst said Cisco’s Q1 outlook remains risky due to limited supply chain improvements.
Cisco shares are trading higher as the FQ4 results and guidance came in better than what investors feared given the slowdown in infrastructure spending, supply chain constraints, and macro headwinds.


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While WWE remains up for sale, details around a potential deal are thin on the ground.
Since a sale became a possibility everyone from media organisations to Saudi Arabian sports investment funds has been linked with a deal. One of the most talked about potential buyers is Endeavor, who also owns UFC.
Speaking on Endeavor’s fourth-quarter earnings call on February 28th, CEO Ari Emanuel said that WWE is an “unbelievable product.” However, Emanuel added that the company won’t be doing anything that impacts its current position.
“As it relates to WWE, it’s an unbelievable product,” Emanuel said. “Vince, you know, created a great business. We’ve had a longstanding relationship with them over two decades. We’re doing on location business with them, streaming business with them, his business is really valuable. But we’re not going to do anything as it relates to changing our leverage position right now.”
WWE Deal Comes With Major Price Tag
WWE remains up for sale with a recent report stating that Vince McMahon has slapped a whopping $9 billion price tag on the sports entertainment giant. McMahon returned to the company in January after ‘retiring’ back in July. The Executive Chairman’s exit came as he was engulfed by allegations of serious sexual misconduct. It was also alleged that McMahon made hush money payments totaling well over $10 million in an effort to suppress these claims.
It was stated that at the time of his return that McMahon was only taking a place on the Board of Directors in order to facilitate the sale of the company. However, recent reports have claimed that McMahon’s presence has proved to be a “hindrance” to the process.
H/t to f4wonline


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Amazon has expanded the network of data centers underpinning its massively popular cloud services, moving into the Land Down Under.
This week, the company said it had opened a new "edge location" in Sydney, Australia, designed to speed the use of its S3 and CloudFront services inside the country. "Based on customer requests, internal logging, and the response to our recent survey, we believe that this location will prove to be of great benefit to our customers, providing them with increased performance and reduced latency," read a blog post from Amazon's Jeff Barr.
S3 is a way for businesses and developers to storage massive amounts of data online, while CloudFront is an Akamai-like "content delivery network," specifically designed to help web applications speed the delivery of oft-accessed content, including graphics and videos.
Amazon is best known as an online retailer, but in recent years, it has also built an enormous cloud operation -- known as Amazon Web Services -- that sells access to virtual servers, storage, and other computing resources that let businesses and developers build and operate online applications without installing their own hardware in their own data centers. S3 and CloudFront are just two of these services.
Last month, a handful of obscure internet records indicated that Amazon would be expanding into Sydney. But the company has not yet gone whole hog. An edge location is not a full-fledged Amazon data center capable of speeding access to the company's entire set of web services, including its primary Elastic Compute Cloud service, which provides instant access to virtual servers.
Currently, Amazon runs full data centers near Washington DC, San Francisco, Portland, São Paulo, Dublin, Singapore, and Tokyo. Presumably, for the edge location in Sydney, Amazon is leasing data center space from some other outfit.


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Targeting $10 million in annual recurring revenue, NZX-listed Blackpearl Group is wooing partners to help deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Stories by Rob O'Neill
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has completed its shift to TechnologyOne’s latest generation of SaaS-based ERP software, CiA.
Weta Digital is being closed and 265 jobs are set to go following its 2021 sale to San Francisco-based video game engine developer Unity.
Telco Spark has unveiled plans to establish a network of satellite-connected cell towers throughout New Zealand.
One New Zealand is using generative artificial intelligence to help contact centre agents understand why customers call and how to support them.
Waikato Regional Council has officially completed a challenging Infor CloudSuite rollout, replacing 28 legacy systems with a single integrated platform.
Vector Technology Solutions and AWS have extended their strategic alliance focusing on developing deeper renewable energy insights until 2025.
NZX-listed freight software developer Eroad is working with Microsoft on generative AI product development.
Revenue at utilities software developer Gentrack surged 34.5 per cent in the year to 30 September to reach $169.9 million.
Tori Colebourne, formerly head of growth at Spark data business Qrious, has been appointed chief marketing officer at Blackpearl Group.
RedShield Security has strengthened its relationship with AWS to deliver value and upskill resellers on managing modern cybersecurity threats.
Tough trading conditions since the end of the pandemic have prompted The Warehouse to postpone $30 million of planned systems investment.
Auckland-based component maker Rakon has seen revenue slide from $87.2 million to $61.3 million in the six months to 30 September.
With its local broadband internet business sold to 2degrees, MyRepublic's mobile business has been rebranded as Rocket Mobile.
There have been no signs of ant COVID-19 business hangover at data and analytics specialist SAS Institute NZ.


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Stores prepare for Black Friday deals, crowdsPosted: Updated:
Stores are preparing for what they expect to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year on Black Friday in Hudson Valley.
Both in-store and online deals will be available for shoppers on Friday and some even on Thanksgiving Day.
The Walmart in Middletown will be open 24 hours for holiday shoppers, and Target will be open from 6 p.m. until midnight before reopening early Friday morning.
Target management says closing the stores will give their employees time to recharge and prepare for shoppers.
More than 164 million Americans plan to shop this Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation.


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Ottawa, ON – John Barlow, Conservative Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Agri-Food and Food Security, Dave Epp, Conservative Deputy Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Agri-Food and Food Security, and Richard Lehoux, Conservative Deputy Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Agri-Food and Food Security, released the following statement calling for ground beef and pork to be exempt from front-of-package labelling:
“The Liberals are once again attacking the Canadian agriculture sector.
“Canada is poised to become the first jurisdiction in the world to self-impose front-of-package labelling on ground beef and pork. This decision will undercut Canadian producers both domestically and abroad. The United States has already identified this policy as a trade irritant potentially leading to fewer exports of Canadian beef. This would be a major hit to producers.
“Mexico, Israel, and the EU have all exempted single ingredient whole-foods from front-of-package labelling under similar policies. Meanwhile, Health Canada will soon force beef and pork producers to put a warning label on their ground products as part of a new program. Despite other single-ingredient products like meats, vegetables, fruits, and dairy products being exempt from front-of-package labelling, Health Canada is deliberately targeting ground beef and pork as an ‘unhealthy’ source of protein for Canadians.
“It doesn’t make sense if roast beef and whole hams are exempt, but the same source of protein is no longer acceptable after being ground.
“Almost 90 per cent of Canadians cook ground beef once a month or more. It, along with ground pork, continues to be an affordable source of protein in Canadian families’ diets. With the price of groceries up 10 per cent year-over-year and high inflation compounding production costs for Canadian farmers, now is not the time to add onerous red tape to our agri-food supply chains.
“Conservatives will always stand with Canada’s hard-working farmers and producers. Rather than having out-of-touch government departments impose additional regulations on food producers, the government should be focused on tackling the cost-of-living crisis and sky-high food prices.
“Conservatives are calling on the Trudeau Liberals to stop their attack on Canadian farmers and producers, and scrap front-of-package labelling for ground beef and pork to ensure Canadian consumers and farmers aren’t unnecessarily burdened.”


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Jan 31, 2020
Levi's shuts half its China stores on coronavirus outbreak, expects financial hit
Jan 31, 2020
Levi Strauss & Co has shut about half of its stores in China due to the outbreak of a new coronavirus and will take a near-term financial hit as a result of the epidemic, Chief Financial Officer Harmit Singh said on Thursday.
This comes a few months after Levi's opened its largest store in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic which has killed about 170 people, marring its plans to tap into the city's 11-million strong population.
"It will put a dampener on our growth objectives in the near term," Singh told Reuters in an interview.
The flu-like virus has set-off alarm bells across the globe with companies such as Starbucks Corp closing stores and warning of a financial hit from slowing business in the world's most populous country.
Levi's has also stopped all employee travel in and out of China.
Singh said the coronavirus impact was not baked into the company's full year forecast, but will be quantified when it reports first quarter results in April.
Levi's, which gets about 3% of its revenue from China, forecast 2020 earnings on Thursday above estimates, boosted by demand for women's apparel in its own stores and online.
With foot traffic at malls and department stores shrinking, Levi's has been investing more in its e-commerce business, adding features designed to attract millennial and Gen Z consumers.
A new customisation option on Levi's website lets shoppers personalize their pair of jeans with custom prints and patches, helping the near 170-year old company pull in more customers looking to add a personal touch to their denim.
The company, however, missed fourth quarter revenue estimates, hurt by plunging sales at department stores and protests in Hong Kong which dented demand in the Asian shopping hub.
Fourth quarter net revenue fell 1.4% to $1.57 billion (1.2 billion pounds), compared with analysts' estimates of $1.58 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Adjusted net income fell 9% to $108 million, or 26 cents per share, in the quarter ended Nov. 24.
The company forecast adjusted 2020 profit of $1.18 per share to $1.22 per share above Wall Street estimates of $1.17.
© Thomson Reuters 2023 All rights reserved.


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Coronado Brewing Company is crowned best in the world, with a Silver and Gold medal to boot
Coronado, CA, April 14, 2014 — For the next two years, Coronado Brewing will reign as the champion among all mid-size brewers in the world, having received the highly coveted Champion Brewery/Champion Brewmaster Award this past weekend, hosted by the Brewers Association. The awards were presented at the conclusion of Craft Brewers Conference & BrewExpo America® in Denver, CO and are arguably the most prestigious awards in craft brewing. The World Beer Cup is held biennially during the CBC and the World Beer Cup awards brewers worldwide for their achievements in brewing quality craft beer.
As the company gains more social media fans and its restaurant and tasting room are more packed than ever, Coronado Brewing also now has validation
from the brewing governing body of 219 judges from all over the world. The Southern California brewer also walked away with a Gold medal for their Islander IPA and a Silver for Old Scallywag.
Presented with thousands of choices in the beer aisle and on beer taps, what this means to the average craft beer drinker is that any beer they choose from Coronado Brewing is brewed by the best in its class. In fact, this year’s event was particularly competitive; the proportion of breweries winning one or more awards was only 18 percent, compared to 27 percent in 2012. There was a 75.6 percent increase in breweries competing this year versus 2012, which had 799 breweries that entered beers in the competition. A total of 253 breweries took home awards in 2014, a 16.6 percent increase over 2012.
“It is a huge honor to win one medal at World Beer Cup, so winning two and Champion Mid-size brewery is epic!” Said company president and Coronado native Rick Chapman. “It is a privilege to be recognized by the Brewers Association and to be in the company of previous multiple time winner Firestone Walker.”
Chapman’s brother Ron, company co-founder and CEO added; “I am very proud of our team of brewers. Winning two medals and Champion Mid-size Brewery and Brewmaster is well deserved for Shawn Dewitt, our director of brewery operations as well as Ryan Brooks, our head brewer.”
A mid-size brewery is classified as one that brews 15,000 to 6mm barrels per year, and Coronado Brewing is targeting to brew around 30,000 in its two facilities in 2014. Winners for the Champion Brewery Awards are determined based on the results of the competitive beer judging held at the World Beer Cup. Breweries are awarded points based on medals won, and these points are tabulated to arrive at the results, with criteria including most points, most gold medals, and more.
The panel of 219 judges from 31 countries worked in teams to conduct blind tasting evaluations of the beers and determine the awards. “Brewers from around the globe participate in the World Beer Cup to win recognition for their creativity and brewing skills,” said Charlie Papazian, president of the Brewers Association. “For a brewer, a World Beer Cup gold award allows them to say that their winning beer represents the best of that beer style in the world.”
Drawing the highest number of entries to date, the 2014 edition of the World Beer Cup saw 4,754 beers from 1,403 breweries representing 58 countries—a 21 percent increase in the number of entries from the 2012 World Beer Cup, which had 3,921 entries.
Brewers from five continents earned awards from an elite international panel of judges at this tenth biennial competition, with brewers from 22 countries—ranging from Australia and Brazil to Taiwan and the United Kingdom—honored. Judges awarded 281 out of 282 total possible awards, reflecting the chance for one gold, one silver and one bronze award in each of 94 beer style categories.
Shawn DeWitt, co founder and director of brewery operations at Coronado Brewing had this to sum up; “Winning mid-size brewery of the year is validation for seventeen years of hard work and is great for all San Diego breweries.”
Company URL: https://coronadobrewing.com
About Coronado Brewing Company:
In 1996, when craft beer was still a foreign term and San Diego County was home to only a handful of breweries, the Chapman brothers Ron and Rick opened a brewpub in their hometown of Coronado. CBC brews abundantly hoppy West Coast-style ales staying true to their San Diego roots. They began distributing their beers throughout the local market, and today you can find Coronado beers in 13 states across the US. In addition to their long established pub in Coronado, the company opened a tasting room inside their newly built San Diego production facility in early 2013.
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Back in 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic was raging and Americans were struggling to make ends meet, there was some light in the darkness: some states began sending out “is there a 2023 stimulus check.” The payments, formally called Economic Impact Payments, were meant to help offset higher prices during the pandemic. Americans have three such lifelines. Now that the pandemic has passed, many are wondering if there will be a fourth stimulus check this year.
VERIFY took to the experts and found out that while the federal government may not be sending another round of these payments, some states still offer them. Whether or not your state is sending you a one-time state rebate or inflation relief payment will depend on a few different factors, including state eligibility criteria and payment amounts.
The Potential for a 2023 Stimulus Check: Exploring the Possibilities
For example, Colorado is giving out one-time rebates worth up to $1,400 per household. Eligibility for this state stimulus payment depends on your state tax filing status: married filing jointly, head of household, or single. The state is also taking into account any dependents you have (up to two) and your state-adjusted gross income.
Other states that are sending out similar rebates and stimulus payments include Montana and New Mexico, which have budget surpluses thanks to billions of dollars in federal relief. The IRS has weighed in on these special state rebate payments and said they will likely not be taxable. That being said, you should consult a trusted tax professional before filing your 2023 federal return for details on how these special state rebates will affect your taxes.


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July 9, 2003 -- Finding out how much of a little-known but artery-clogging fat your favorite snack and processed foods contain is about to get a lot easier. The FDA today announced that manufacturers will soon be required to list on the Nutrition Facts label the amount of trans fatty acids, or trans fat, in foods.
The new rule will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, but manufacturers will start phasing in the new labels well before that deadline. It's the first major change in the Nutrition Facts label since it was established in 1993.
"We are empowering Americans to make healthier choices about the foods they eat," says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in a news release. "By putting trans fat information on food labels, we are making it possible for consumers to make better educated choices to lower their intake of these unhealthy fats and cholesterol."
Trans fats are frequently found in the same foods that contain other types of fat, such as cookies, crackers, fried foods such as french fries and chicken fried in shortening, donuts, and margarine sticks.
When a Good Fat Goes Bad
Trans fatty acids are the result of a process called hydrogenation that converts a relatively healthy, unsaturated liquid fat, such as vegetable oil, into a solid one, to make the product shelf stable and stay fresh longer. When the fat becomes solid, the body treats it more like a saturated fat, like butter or animal fat. But it is not classified as saturated fat on food labels
"Trans fat, like saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, raises LDL 'bad' cholesterol levels in the blood, which increases the risk for heart disease," says Claude Lenfant, MD, director of National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), in the release. "It is therefore desirable to have food labels display all the information that can help consumers choose foods low in saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol as part of a healthy diet."
The new regulations will require food makers to list the number of trans fat grams a food contains in addition to the saturated and unsaturated fat content and cholesterol level.
How Much Trans Fat Is Too Much?
But some say the labels don't go far enough in putting trans fat into the context of a day's diet and should treat it more like saturated fat.
The consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) had requested the FDA include trans fats in the existing 20-gram daily value for saturated fat as part of a new combined daily value for both heart-disease promoting fats.
"The new labels will let consumers compare trans fat content from product to product, and that will be a great step forward," says Margo Wootan, CSPI nutrition policy director, in a news release. "It will be hard, though, for people to tell if a given number of grams of trans fat is a lot or a little. Five grams may not seem like a lot, but it is."
A report issued last year by the Institute of Medicine said that because trans fatty acids closely resemble saturated fats and provide no known health benefit, there is no "safe" level of trans fatty acids, and people should eat as little of them as possible in maintaining a healthy diet.
The American Heart Association also recommends that people limit the combined amount of trans fat and saturated fat to less than 10% of their total calories consumed daily. Consuming high levels of these fats has been strongly linked to the development of atherosclerosis, the disease process that underlies heart attack and stroke.
Nutritionist Kathleen Zelman, RD, adds that calorie for calorie, all fats are the same, and the most important thing to understand is that people should try to reduce the total amount of fat in their diet.
"We can safely lump saturated and trans fats into one category," says Zelman, who is a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and a nutrition consultant for the WebMD Weight Loss Clinic.
"But don't lose sight of the fact that you still need to monitor portion sizes and look for low-fat foods, and when choosing between a product high in saturated fat or trans fats versus one that's not, it's always best to chose the one that's not."


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Following the US ban on telecommunications giant Huawei, Facebook has decided to terminate the partnership for its smartphones. Are Huawei and Honor getting ready to say goodbye to Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram? Yes, but there is no reason to panic …
Facebook is only the last of the US companies that have decided to end their business relationship with Huawei. Although the ban was lifted until August 19, it appears that Zuckerberg has decided not to wait and stop any partnership with the Chinese brand now.
Huawei suffers, users rejoice
Obviously, as this is a business partnership, Huawei will be financially affected by this Facebook decision. The decision, however, only concerns the presence of applications that are normally found at system startup: from now on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp will no longer be pre-installed on Huawei and Honor smartphones.
From the users' point of view, this is not really a tragedy. There have been many complaints (not just for Huawei) because these apps are already pre-installed on many smartphones and cannot be removed but only disabled. There was no doubt about each other's privacy security, especially as a result of the dust raised by Cambridge Analytica that has not yet been completely eliminated.
The end of the partnership does not mean, however, that Chinese-branded smartphones will be incompatible with Facebook's social and messaging apps. For users already using a Huawei device, nothing changes. What will change is just the situation of smartphones coming to store shelves soon, but still being able to install these apps from the Google Play Store, just like everyone else.
Do you think Facebook was too rushed with its own decision that precedes the final ban in August?
(tagsToTranslate) facebook (t) whatsapp (t) instagram (t) messenger (t) huawei (t) ban (t) problems (t) preinstalled (t) bloatware


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It has stepped down from the Board and will cease all financial contributions.
Grazi will take over the post currently held by Brandee Dallow on January 1, 2023.
The new campaign is called "Thank You, By the Way."
The foreward was written by Edward Enninful, Editor in Chief of British Vogue.
Collections to be sold on Moda Operandi.
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What started as a rough week for Qualcomm just got worse. Apple is piling onto the lawsuit train just ahead of the weekend, following in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s footsteps with a roughly billion-dollar suit against the San Diego-based mobile chipmaker.
Apple was specifically named in the recent FTC filing, which accused Qualcomm of engaging in an anti-competitive “no license, no chips” policy, which jacked up licensing fees on patents and forced phone makers to pay more for using competitors’ processors.
In the words of the FTC earlier this week:
Qualcomm precluded Apple from sourcing baseband processors from Qualcomm’s competitors from 2011 to 2016. Qualcomm recognized that any competitor that won Apple’s business would become stronger, and used exclusivity to prevent Apple from working with and improving the effectiveness of Qualcomm’s competitors.
Apple’s own $1 billion suit accuses Qualcomm of charging for patents “they have nothing to do with,” citing TouchID, displays and cameras as categories where the component maker has allegedly stifled innovation by making licensing more costly.
Apple adds, in a statement provided to TechCrunch:
Qualcomm built its business on older, legacy, standards but reinforces its dominance through exclusionary tactics and excessive royalties. Despite being just one of over a dozen companies who contributed to basic cellular standards, Qualcomm insists on charging Apple at least five times more in payments than all the other cellular patent licensors we have agreements with combined.
The suit follows a number of other international legal proceedings for Qualcomm across the world, including large fines in South Korea and China. We’ve reached out to the company for comment.


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What does the US ban mean for potential Huawei customers?
We have been hearing much chatter regarding the latest releases of Huawei phones without google support, but not everyone is talking about how it will affect the end-user in terms of regular usage. It’s time to face reality and bid farewell to an amazing brand that still offers the best hardware.
Current status of Huawei and the US debacle
Let’s first discuss the current status of Huawei and the US debacle in the light of statements of the officials.
Back in May 2019, the world came across shocking news that, as per Trump’s orders, Google had to cut ties with Huawei, and its Google Mobile Services (GMS) would only be accessible to the existing Huawei devices.
“We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications. For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices.”
After this decision, to date, Huawei has been able to use only the open-source version of Android on the devices released after this announcement. The US-China trade war has not only affected Huawei, but Google is also losing in its business.
As per the latest update, Google has applied for a licence to trade with the second-largest smartphone maker – Huawei.
Moreover, recently an article surfaced on GSM Arena, stating that Huawei remains banned from doing business with US companies for another year.
So, the picture is unclear yet, and one should make an informed decision based on Huawei’s post-US-China trade war devices and their resale value in Pakistan.
Issues with Huawei’s new devices
We are so used to Google in daily life that thinking of a device without it, pops up the question, “Is it even workable?”
The missing Google’s Play Store in Huawei’s new smartphones is a daunting challenge. It requires users to manually download and update even some of the widely acclaimed essential apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Skype, Facebook and Twitter etc. through Huawei’s phone clone or play store alternatives. The experienced and tech-savvy smartphone users can find their way of installing the missing apps; contrary to that, it is a troublesome activity for the category of users who merely know to install apps from Google Play Store in a few clicks.
Huawei Phones without Google Support
Google warned Huawei users having uncertified devices
Moreover, the cyberattacks ratio is already growing all across the world. Hackers see the missing Google apps from Huawei’s newer smartphones as an opportunity to induce malware in user smartphones. Recently, Google has warned the users of Huawei Smartphones not to install their apps from unverified sources as it includes a high risk of being infected with malware and several viruses.
“Sideloaded Google apps will not work reliably because we do not allow these services to run on uncertified devices where security may be compromised. Sideloading Google’s apps also carry a high risk of installing an app that has been altered or tampered with in ways that can compromise user security.” – Google’s official statement
HMS vs GMS – AppGallery vs Google’s Play Store
At Trump’s announcement, the already ongoing project of Huawei’s official app store – AppGallery came to surface and got the attention of the masses. The second-largest smartphone maker was very confident about AppGallery’s success and it still believes to compete with Google’s Play Store.
As per Bloomberg, Huawei told its partners that by 2018, 50 million Europeans would be using its App Store instead of Google’s. Now, Huawei claims 400 million users have the AppGallery that has ranked it at 3rd position in app stores. Well, it comes pre-installed on Huawei devices, so it is difficult to say how many users are “actively” accessing it.
Huawei’s app store is getting better and the company claims that users can download and run most of the apps, but the question is about the big titles that are still missing, including (Facebook) Messenger, Netflix, and Instagram. Then there comes the hub of widely used Google Apps – Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos that are also missing.
Developers from all around the world are called by Huawei to contribute to their app store. However, the wave of uncertainty is holding them back due to the fact that either it is worth spending their time or not. As, in the past, we have seen Microsoft’s and BlackBerry’s app store failure.
Which apps are available on Huawei App Gallery?
- Zoom – No
- Houseparty – No
- Disney+ – No
- Microsoft Teams – No but Microsoft Office, Swiftkey, Bing and Microsoft News are available so it’s probably only a matter of time.
- TikTok – Yes
- WhatsApp – No
- Skype – Yes, in the form of Skype Lite.
- Messenger – No
- BBC News – No
- Instagram – No
- Netflix – No
- Microsoft Outlook – No but see Microsoft note above
- Tesco Grocery – No
- Uber Eats – No (and no Uber)
- Audible – No
- Asda – No
- Twitter – No
- Snapchat – Yes
- Sky News – No
- NHS – No
- Prime Video – No but as the main Amazon Shopping app is present, we’d expect this at some point.
- Discord – No
- Just Eat – Yes
- Facebook – No
- Morrisons – No
- Spotify – No
- BBC iPlayer – No
- Twitch – No
- Deliveroo – Yes
- Duolingo – No
- eBay – No
- Amazon Shopping – Yes
To or not to buy Huawei Phones?
So in layman terms, we could say that Huawei phones still offer the best hardware at an affordable price, but they are not worth buying anymore because all the major digital platforms are not allowed to do business with Huawei. It is not just about Google services but, imagine a flagship phone without the official support of Google, Facebook, Instagram, Skype, Microsoft, and the list goes on.
I mean, yes, there are ways that you can sideload the apps, but these are just workarounds and do not change the fact that US companies are not allowed to do business with Huawei. Recently, Wall street journal also published an article “Huawei Struggles to Get Along Without Google,” the article revolves around the fact that Huawei has found out many workarounds but still finding it challenging to replace google.
Should You Buy Huawei Phones especially In Pakistan?
“Should I buy a Huawei phone amid the US-China trade war?” This question is revolving in the mind of the loyal Pakistani Huawei users. They can only decide after knowing potential problems using new Huawei devices and Huawei’s resale market in Pakistan, which I have uncovered in this post.
If you are one of those who can survive without the official support of play services, that includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google docs, Google presentation, Google Calander, updating of apps, licensing, availability of popular games, etc., then Huawei is still a better option considering the price points and the hardware that they are offering.
Pakistan has Google Oriented market – Stats
Google has a 98.2% Search Engine market share & 40.39% OS market share in Pakistan against others The high ratio clearly shows the Pakistani market is not up for Non-Google Android phones. When the users think to resale their gadgets, then the Non-Google factor mows down their phone’s potential resale price despite the amazing hardware features of Huawei’s latest flagships.
We do not know the ultimate result of the US-China trade war. Up till now, the US Government has not given any clear soft signal regarding it. Huawei’s newer phones are coming without GMS, and users are facing difficulties in installing the previous Google Apps they were using, along with other apps who have a large market.
AppGallery is still developing but has not beaten Google Play Store, and it does not seem to compete for any soon. The unverified ways of installing Google Apps have high malware risks, and the largest search engine has officially warned Huawei users about it as well.
Considering that Microsoft & Blackberry are prime examples of failures when it came to building and flourishing their own OS, but here with Huawei, it not just the OS, it is about official support of giant companies that controls more than half the world’s digital data is missing from the picture.
In light of the aforementioned scenario, it is not a wise move to invest in Huawei’s newer smartphones to keep yourself out of warm waters.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or views of DND


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G20 summit: Putin opposes protectionism, unilateralism
“We’ve got to deal with the pressing issues which have amassed in worldwide commerce.
Specifically, it’s essential to attempt to curb protectionism, abandon the apply of unilateral sanctions, and resume provide chains,” Putin mentioned.
He believes that there isn’t a different to the World Commerce Group at present, and a steady and efficient multilateral buying and selling system based mostly on common norms and ideas is required.
Putin mentioned that nations must beef up efficient mechanisms of multilateral cooperation and strengthen key worldwide establishments, whereas counting on the UN Constitution and usually accepting norms and ideas of worldwide regulation, Xinhua reported.
The 2-day summit is hosted by Saudi Arabia, the present president of the bloc.
#G20 #summit #Putin #opposes #protectionism #unilateralism