ZTE to enter US retail market

ZTE, China's second-biggest maker of telephone equipment, is expanding in the US with an agreement to sell a handset through Verizon Wireless, reports Bloomberg

ZTE is in talks with T-Mobile USA and Sprint Nextel as the US becomes the focal point of ZTE's handset efforts.

The company got more than 80% of its revenue last year from Asia and Africa, and spent more than $1.5 billion in 2009 investing in hardware and software in the US.

Stores that successfully bring the e-commerce experience to the brick-and-mortar environment are most likely to differentiate themselves from the competition, states MultiChannel Merchant.

Gilbert Fiorentino, chief executive of Systemax Technology Worldwide says by creating as many touch-points with the Internet as possible on the sales floor, Systemax's wholly-owned company CompUSA saw a 20% increase in in-store conversions in 2009.

Fiorentino says Internet touch-points (or kiosks) connected to as many products as possible on the show floor assists the customer's purchasing decision.

With e-reader prices dropping and major tech players emerging into the book retail business, it's speculated that publishers will be reaping profits from e-book adverts, says The Wall Street Journal Online

Google plans to roll out its own bookstore, Google Editions, later this year and is expected to be the world's largest bookstore, offering millions of trade, technical and out-of-copyright (which would also be free) books.

Google has taken the first steps in the advertising direction through Google Books archive, a collection of over 10 million scanned books from the world's largest libraries displaying advertisements next to search results.