According to Computerworld, Microsoft has come under fire from European regulators for the proposed name of its mandated Media Player-free operating system. Microsoft had planned to call the OS the Windows XP Reduced Media Edition but the EC is not…
A recent article in Slate reports on a study that finds that not all American companies are perceived to be equally American by consumers outside the US. This is hardly news, but certainly worth a read. The study features a…
A good NY Times article about the growth of home video sales outside the US. In Japan I’ve seen theaters charging roughly $18 for an adult ticket; at these prices I would certainly consider waiting for the movie to come…
Chris Anderson is traveling through India and commenting on globalization along the way…
I’ve spent the past week in Japan and have had such a great time watching how US-based companies market products in this country. One company that has spent a great deal of time in this market is Coca-Cola. But it…
Here are some entertaining tidbits from the excellent Christian Science Monitor story on the strange things that happen with Western business meets Eastern culture. –> Self-tanners are not the popular item they are in the West. In China, white skin…
According to this article Random House is going to set up a publishing operation in India. “It’s time a publishing house like Random has a presence in India. It will be publishing for India and in India,” Simon Littlewood, international…
Starwood Hotels & Resorts announced that the first Four Points by Sheraton hotel has opened in China. This brings to 30 the number of properties Starwood owns and/or manages in China and a claim that Starwood is “the largest upscale…
Interesting article in the NYTimes on Lenovo outsourcing management to the folks at IBM (despite the fact that the division lost a few billion dollars in recent years. The beginning of the article pretty much sums up the challenges that…
Thanks to the Internet, I recently stumbled upon Starbucks’ number one fan. His name is Winter and he has visited more than 4,500 Starbucks in five countries. His goal is to visit every Starbucks on this planet and, at the…
Michael Kaplan explains one of the major dangers of internatinalized domain names (IDNs): phishing. One of the tactics that phishers use to con people is to create URLs that look like reputable URLs (citibank.com; ebay.com) yet really aren’t. They do…
I am pleased to be presenting a free Webinar hosted by Transware PLC on Wednesday, Feb. 9th at 1pm EST (10 am PST). I’ll be talking about Web globalization best practices and will draw on the findings from Byte Level’s…
The International Herald Tribune reports that English and Hindi have, for a variety of reasons, merged into a sort of lingua franca in a country with more than a dozen popular languages. Hindi may be the national language of India,…
According to the WSJ, the US will see Chinese-made automobiles by 2007. And we’re not talking about Hondas or Dodges made in China, we’re talking about a Chinese car company exporting to the US. The company is Chery Automobile and…
I was recently interviewed by the folks at Marketing Sherpa on the basics of Web globalization. The article came out today and is available for free here until January 13th. Anne Holland founded Marketing Sherpa back in 2000 and in…