Samsung Chairman Facing Tax Charges?

As reading through some business news articles, I came across one that talked about Samsung Chairman has been into taxe charges. I thought it was interesting, and wanted to share this news with my classmates.

The chairman of the Samsung Group, Mr. Lee Kun Hee, has been suspected of avoiding taxes on billions of US dollars. He was thought to had hidden the money in stock accounts under the titles of his supporters. Furthermore, it does not seem to be his first charge. As a result of this incident, Mr. Lee’s former criminal charges have been checked again. One of such is the charge of breach of trust, that he was involved in issuing and selling Samsung stock in an unfairly low price to his son making it possible for his son to take over the business empire.

He is not the only Samsung leader who faced criminal charges. Nine other Samsung executives were indicted on similar charges. None of them was arrested or charged any punishment of their wrongdoings with the help of admiration of Korean people for the corporation. Through the history of the corporation, similar incidents took place several times, but the authority did not want to press charge against them thinking that it will endanger the national economy, for the fact that the company is the main player in the country’s economy. Plus, they have ADMITTED their wrongdoings.

The Parliament once conducted an investigation by putting a whistle-blower within the company, and found out that Mr. Lee and his closest supporters kept enormous slush funds, misusing money from Samsung’s subsidiaries and hiding it in stock and bank accounts opened in the name of theirs. Plus, the investigator witnessed that Samsung was involved in a bribery network, giving cash gift to prosecutors, bureaucrats and politicians. However, the officials and executives denied the bribery accusation, and not enough evidence to support this accusation was found.

Was it an example of a wealthy man who could get away with anything that stand on his way?

Entry 6. 20601002

20600794-Entry-6: Web 2.0 Series #3: What is Web 2.0?!

Web 2.0 actually is not a specific name for specific object or one particular program. But it’s more like an umbrella term for the new trend of the Internet world, the way it works, looks etc. Sometimes called the “New Internet” the Web 2.0 is a big phenomena. Then what’s big thing here, what’s so special about Web 2.0? And more importantly how does help businesses to develop and flourish in the online world?

There are 2 major paradigm shifts of the Internet in Web 2.0. First it’s “User Generated Content”

Today everyone knows YouTube, MySpace or Facebook. These are all part of Web 2.0 approaches including blogs( www.blogger.com, www.blogspot.com) social networking websites (www.myspace.com, www.facebook.com, www.hi5.com, www.orkut.com), photo sharing websites (www.flickr.com). These web sites let everyone share their opinions, thoughts, images and photos, video audio files freely to the world at large. As with blog anyone can express themselves. Even blog sites as www.kotaku.com, www.engadget.com are being so successful that it’s a perfect business model of Web 2.0. Users are augmenting the news by reporting current events sometimes faster and with details often overlooked or ignored by the professional news media. Even contents and works are mostly amateurish anyone can become famous and gain audience easily if that anyone has the real talent.

The second shift is what they call it, Thin Client Computing.

In thin client computing, data and applications are stored on Web servers, and a user has access from any computer via a Web browser. Thin clients are not a new concept, but have been rejuvenated by the Internet. Many believe that thin client computing will eventually supplant locally installed office and other applications and that turning the Web into a gigantic application server. This is actually the ultimate manifestation or goal of Web 2.0. And this leads people to use less locally installed softwares but to use application online.

Then what Caused Web 2.0?

Bandwidth and power. The internet is so ubiquitous that even people now take it as granted. Wi-Fi, high speed LAN, fiber optics, satellite connection all these technologies are aimed to boost the Internet speed and spread the usage of it. The overall size of data stored on web servers, overall bandwidth of internet capacity, overall transmission rate of data flow is increasing and expanding day by day. This allows people to communicate through internet easily, from anywhere for relatively cheap price.

In addition, entry level computers became powerful enough to execute scripts in an HTML page without noticeable delays. Combined with refinements in Web programming (such as AJAX), the Web has become a transparent extension of an individual’s PC just as local area networks (LANs) extended the user’s computing resources inside the enterprise in the 1980s and 1990s.

IBM plans big India investment

Summary

Entry 6

 

The computer giant IBM has recently announced that it will triple its investment in India, which amounts to roughly US$ 6 billion. IBM has been working in India with its extensive operations such as call centers and has been experiencing successful outcomes for the last three years. The new mega investment will be used in building service delivery centers in Bangalore, technology hub, and also telecommunications research and innovation center for improved customer service.

Many corporations, including IBM has realized the importance of India in future economy and the vast growth rate of its domestic market. IBM has been working in India since the early 1990’s, but the actual economic boom started during 2003. Right after that IBM has purchased the India’s third largest business outsourcing firm Daksh in 2004. The India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has projected that the software service sector is to grow more than 25% during this financial year.

One of the biggest attractions that India has towards foreign corporations is the low labor cost. Many of the US firms are taking advantage of India’s labor market that consists of many young talented college graduates who can readily work in accounting and insurance claim processing.

 

Personal Opinion

 

The importance of outsourcing is yet growing, and its importance is recognized by many of the mega multinational companies. The idea of outsourcing is usually focused in China or countries in South America for cheap man labor power. What India’s labor market uniquely possesses is the ability for the people to speak English fluently. We know that Dell computers are saving huge amounts of money by having service call centers in India. Many of the calls are from the U.S. but the customers do not realize that they were speaking to a person in India. This is how fluent they are in English.

I can see that IBM is going one step further with its outsourcing tactic in India. The mega-corporation has now decided to broaden its use of India’s vast labor market and offer them jobs such as accounting, insurance claiming process and possibly many other positions that require professional skills.

This many be an indirect threat to the domestic white collar workers in the U.S., but there seems to be no stopping for corporations to look for cheaper and higher quality labor market and taking advantage of it. The implication of this article is that the national barrier of labor power is getting lower by every minute. It is important for students like us to seek what the corporations are looking for in their work places and actively develop those talents in need.

By:20700795 

Google’s Practice Strategic Patience

Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” is so broad as to be imperial, yet Google clearly takes it seriously. Beyond its core search and advertising capabilities, the company has embarked on ventures involving online productivity, blogging, radio and television advertising, online payment, social networks, mobile phone operating systems, and many more information domains.

What information management tools the company hasn’t developed it has acquired: Picasa for photo management; YouTube for online videos; Double-click for web ads; Keyhole for satellite photos (now Google Earth); Urchin for web analytics (now Google Analytics). Google seeks to master not only bits but also electrons: It recently announced an ambitious project to generate low-cost green electricity. While few of these ventures make money today, they are all bricks in the wall of its ambitious strategy, and few doubts Google’s resolve or its ability to make progress toward the ultimate goal. Almost every day the company announces a new product or feature that chips away at information disorganization.

With such a farsighted mission, the short-term profitability of a new offering doesn’t seem to matter as much to Google as it might to other businesses. The company’s managers are strategically patient. CEO Eric Schmidt has estimated that it will take 300 years to achieve the mission of organizing the world’s information. His 1200-quarter forecast might invite smirking; still, it illustrates Google’s long-term approach to building value and capability. Google, unlike many companies, can afford its broad mission and collection of innovations simply because its search based advertising is a fantastically profitable product that provides cover for many unprofitable ones. The company certainly cares about accumulating customers, but its executives believe that over time the business model and the money will take care of themselves. At a 2007 Bear Stearns conference, Schmidt put it this way: “Ubiquity firs, revenues later… Of you can build a sustainable eyeball business, you can always find clever ways to monetize them.”

In other words, not everything will take 300 years. If Google’s expressed mission is to organize the world’s information, it has a somewhat less exalted but equally important unexpressed commercial mission: to monetize consumers’ intentions as revealed by their searches and other online behavior. Search-based advertising is the first highly successful instantiation of this mission.

What makes strategic patience work for Google are the company’s clarity of purpose and attention to detail. Everything Google does extend its reach. It is informational kudzu, always putting down new roots based on the thoroughly internalized principle that information shall be organized by analyzing users’ intentions. Companies aiming to learn from Google must first understand that clear, simple directives underlie the vast infrastructure and ostensible chaos.

entry 6, by 20753001