And for those rare places that only do cash, it's not uncommon for the person in line to turn around and ask a stranger for cash and they'll pay that person in a WeChat transfer. Done in seconds. Happened to me and observed it myself a couple of times.
With digital wallets, there's zero need for credit cards and their predatory interest rates.
China is just absolutely crushing it. The Amazon Self Serve store that's still in testing in USA? Tao Bao pushed their version and it went live last week.
> With digital wallets, there's zero need for credit cards and their predatory interest rates.
How is there zero need? If don't need to borrow money longer than 30 days, you pay zero interest. If you do need a bit longer to pay, you have that option.
“Because the Oculus headset works on Steam games, but the Vive doesn't out of the box work with Oculus Home. You can make it work, but it's not quite official. The Rift is also a little bit more comfortable and people seem to the think the display is generally better."
What? Why would you want Vive to make it work with Oculus Home? Isn't that like saying you want your Android phone to visit Apple's App Store?
Vive works with Steam and I think that's more than adequate. And Vive works with Steam games too, so not sure why you said your first sentence.
This metaphor is dangerous. One potential future for VR is one where Oculus (or Rift) and Vive are two separate platforms, like smartphones. Some overlap in releases, but in general, no compatibility.
The other future is one where your VR device is a replacable peripheral, like a screen or a keyboard. It's absurd to think you'd have to double-check whether the game you want to play supports Dell monitors.
One of these futures is better for consumers, and I'd wager it's the second.
I really enjoyed using my Withing as my daily weighing tool.
However, Nokia is not a brand that I associate with statements like "creating beautifully designed products" or general consumer products period. I wasn't aware they're tapping back into the general consumer market after selling off its mobile division? (Though I did hear something about making a come back in making phones for Nokia)
However, Nokia is not a brand that I associate with statements like "creating beautifully designed products" or general consumer products period.
Do I really need mention their phones of old? As for consumer products, all I've owned are a set of their Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones (also "of old" considering I've had them for 5 or 6 years). They're awesome, and I'll be sad when they die. That's all I know, but it's enough that I wouldn't immediately discount the idea that Nokia can make decent consumer products.
I don't think that's true. The Lumia design language is actually the Nokia N8/N9 design language (look at pictures of either of them and this is immediately evident), and that was designed in-house by a team lead by Axel Meyer.
(Also, Frog Design is based in Palo Alto, and their web site doesn't list a Helsinki office.)
Still waiting for new the dashboard…almost a year now :( And how I wish Stripe allows non automatic deposit, keeps the money in the currency it was paid in and peer to peer transfers! One can hope…
Without knowing anything about how Stripe is built on the back end, I imagine there are probably some architectural issues baked into the automated deposits that would be a significant undertaking to get rid of.
If you go with the notion of "I don't need to prove myself, I'm good enough - look at what I've made", then this is exactly how it should be. Otherwise you're still proving yourself and providing 2 weeks of your highly valuable time for free.
Those 2 weeks should determine whether it works out on other levels (e.g. are both parties comfortable with working each other) and if you do work in that time, you better charge for it.
The problem is the price. When they first launched, the price was starting at $120,000 NTD. You can get a cheaper, gas scooter for say $30,000 NTD. In China, you can get an electric scooter for around $40,000 NTD.
Once the electric market catches on here in Taiwan, the flood of cheaper eletric scooters from China will be Gogoro's biggest challenge.
Gogoro has recently (3 months after launch) reduced their prices and introduced more models - with the light model (no battery plan included) starting at $88,000. And even with cuts from government programs (up to 3, depending on your location in Taiwan), it can be reduced down to $62,000.
I haven't seen a single Gogoro out wild on the streets since it launched in Taiwan 3 months ago.
I think a better strategy would've been getting people to buy into electric scooters first before pushing an 'Apple' E-Scooter with such a irrational price tag.
In Taiwan and China people are willing to spend near US$1000 for an Apple smart phone, so $3000-$4000 for a cool 'Apple' E-Scooter still sounds attractive to me. Unlike a car, you can park this thing directly in front of the stores, so everyone can see it/has to climb over it ;-)
I am not their target market, but next time I am in Taiwan I would rent this scooter, even at double/triple the cost of a regular one. I actually wanted to rent an e-scooter before, but everyone advised against it: "Too slow"
So for me the key question is: Does Gogoro feel like a real scooter, even with two people on it? Does it do to e-scooters what Tesla did for e-cars?
They are advertising faster speeds, but propably not Tesla like (16% faster than ICE scooters).
And that's basically the only point they raise on their advertisement webpage. They show you some of the special & cool features (suspension, drivetrain,...) but every single one is very propably too expensive and there are much cheaper components to aquire on the market. E.g. the water-cooled engine with planetary gear looks super expensive. They absolutely need massive economies of scale or they will fail. And I don't see the appeal of this scooter. There is no reason to pay double what a cheap one costs. I don't think you can compare an Apple phone with a scooter (style vs utility).
Xiaomi is eating a lot of Apple's marketshare. And a smartphone is almost a requirement, while having some nice e-scooter would be _nice_ but probably not on everyone's affordable list.
But even so, Apple is Apple, which has spent a lot of money into marketing/advertising their product and has a huge loyal following.
I too am interested in trying this out when I visit Taiwan next, but I just don't see a lot of people who want to line up and pay 2x the cost for an e-scooter. Also while their hardware/software integration are well beyond what gas scooters can do, but its look isn't that much better.
(Personally I am also wary of their vendor lock-in with the chargestations)
Taiwan is HTC country. iPhone is a foreign status symbol. A scooter is just "something everyone has". There are more registered scooters in Taiwan than people!
I showed my friends here (Kaohsiung) the Gogoro scooter a few months ago, and they said they would never buy it. Their reasoning was exactly as the grandparent comment said: there are cheaper alternatives. They said it's also ingrained into the culture to go for the best deal even if something which costs slightly more is much better.
With digital wallets, there's zero need for credit cards and their predatory interest rates.
China is just absolutely crushing it. The Amazon Self Serve store that's still in testing in USA? Tao Bao pushed their version and it went live last week.