Business Marketing

Apple's latest attempt at negotiating international distribution of the iPhone is in Thailand, according to reports. Reuters cites Prattana Leelapanang, the assistant VP of wireless business marketing for Thailand's Advanced Info Service (AIS); according to Leelapanang, his company is already discussing the details of an arrangement with Apple, including revenue sharing. The last point is particularly notable, as neither Apple nor its telecom partners have in the past admitted to revenue sharing, although it is a widely accepted fact amongst analysts.

AIS owns approximately 50 percent of the Thai cellular market, at 24.5 million subscribers. It is not known when the iPhone might premiere with AIS, but there is unlikely to be a rush, as the company is still planning a test of 3G broadband services.

ET Compass 2008 to explore new paradigms

MUMBAI: Never before has marketing, as a discipline, presented brand marketers with the kind of challenges they are faced with today. As business increasingly gets done at the speed of light, as new technologies rapidly force products and services into obsolescence, as media fragments to the extent that consumer eyeballs become increasingly elusive, and as speedier information dissemination shifts the power to the consumer, marketing paradigms need to be re-engineered to the new dynamic.

The Economic Times, in association with Starcom and Futureworks, presents ET Compass 2008, a day-long event designed to help marketers come to grips with the new marketing paradigm through the cross-fertilisation of ideas and learnings. ET Compass 2008 is being hosted in Mumbai on Thursday, January 31.

Minority Report: Buy the iPhone philosophy...

New customers are the be-all and end-all of the mobile business and evidence of the iPhone's US success is plain to see: AT&T signed up more than a million new customers to its network in just 74 days thanks to the iPhone. O2 will hope for a comparable level of demand from UK consumers.

Three recent developments might have an interesting impact on how well the iPhone does in Europe.

Yahoo Patent Filing Sheds Light On PageRank

As complex as Google's PageRank may be, search experts at Yahoo seem to think it's not complex enough. Based on patent filings, Yahoo is dabbling in ranking algorithms that incorporate more user behavior data in advance of the company's next run at toppling Google's haloed relevance.

Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing at KeyRelevance, goes into painstaking detail of Yahoo's user data challenges at his SEObytheSea blog.

Macy's to cut 271 jobs in northern unit

In the wake of a disappointing holiday selling season, Macy's Inc. disclosed plans to eliminate 271 jobs at its northern division, discontinue most of its wine business and shutter several food operations.

The job cuts account for about 1.5 percent of Macy's North's total workforce and include store-level and corporate posts in areas such as alterations, food, marketing, visual and finance, the company said.

The layoffs take effect in March and are spread across the division: about 100 in the Chicago metro area, 70 in Detroit and 100 in the Minneapolis region. Of those jobs, about 50 are at the Minneapolis headquarters of Macy's North, formerly Marshall Field's.

Mentoring and Coaching: What Drives The Automated Marketing System?

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Breakling news Passport to Wealth on the verge in 2008...

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Southwest's Nick gimmick doesn't get the job done

We recently characterized low-fare behemoth Southwest Airlines' new effort to target business travelers as the "final frontier" for the carrier. For more than 30 years Southwest has posted impressive profits quarter after quarter by courting the leisure market.

And what of that strategy, which is being rolled out this month via a "Be More Productive" campaign from Southwest's longtime ad agency GSD&M Idea City in Austin and Chicago? It is, at the very least, going to be a high-profile campaign.