In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson discusses how big Ant Financial, the financial arm of Alibaba, could become. He considers factors such as its current size, its growth rate, and its plans for expansion. For example, Ant Financial is already the world’s largest mobile payments company, and it is growing at a rapid pace.
Here’s a simple framework for how digital can evolve over time. Some of this thinking is from Competing in the Age of AI. Some is my thinking. Some is others’ assorted thinking. Phase 1: Physical Goods and Services Become Digital. In Part 2, I argued that the industrial age had a lot to do with […]
There was a good paper recently published by Martin Reeves and Raj Varadajaran of the Boston Consulting Group. The paper (When Resilience Is More Important Than Efficiency) touched on a lot of issues related to digital competition – but there was one chart that I thought really hit at the center of a lot of […]
In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson discusses Huawei’s financial performance in 2019, as well as the recent fraud scandal at Luckin Coffee. He argues that Huawei’s strong financial performance is a sign of its resilience, and that the Luckin Coffee scandal is a reminder of the risks of investing in Chinese tech stocks. For example, he notes that Huawei’s revenue grew by 19% in 2019, despite the US government’s restrictions on its business.
Didi and Uber are two of the largest ride-hailing platforms in the world. However, they are facing increasing competition from other companies. In order to maintain their market share, these companies need to make it difficult for drivers to switch to other platforms. One way to do this is to create high driver switching costs.
Zoom is a video communications company that has seen explosive growth in recent years. In this episode of Jeff’s Asia Tech Class, Jeffrey Towson discusses the factors that contributed to Zoom’s success. He talks about the company’s early focus on usability, its ability to scale quickly, and its strong marketing campaign.
A final short discussion about this week’s lecture / podcast on JD vs. Alibaba. And how they compete on different factors. The talk is located here: JD vs. Alibaba: How Retailers and Marketplace Platforms Compete and Evolve in China (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 18) I expanded on this in yesterday’s Daily Lesson, where […]
In this podcast episode of Jeff’s Asia Tech Class, Jeffrey Towson discusses the competitive advantages of JD and Alibaba, two of the largest retailers in China. He argues that JD’s competitive advantages include its strong logistics network and its focus on customer service, while Alibaba’s competitive advantages include its large user base and its ability to connect buyers and sellers.
Hi, I’ve been building out visual models of platform businesses for like 4 years. From Alibaba and JD to Google and MasterCard. The goal is to visually show the key interactions and sources of competitive strength. For simple marketplace platforms, like EBay, my pictures are pretty simple. But for companies like Alibaba and JD, they […]
I attended the WeChat Open Class in Guangzhou and WeChat Work 3.0 was one of the big topics this year. There is a growing suite of digital tools for enterprise management, communication and collaboration. And they raise some fascinating strategy questions. It’s clear that enterprise tools in mobile-first China are going to evolve differently. These […]