Jack Ma is poised to take over the world. of Business. Photo Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)/Photo by Natalie Behring

May is going to be awesome for iPad 2 lovers since it is way ahead of Facebook getting a piece of pie in China’s prosperous business world, but bad for Nokia employees, and panda cars on Taobao. If all this business it too much for you, be sure to check in with online marketing legend Jack Ma, who leaked a slice of his sweet retiring dream.

Jack Ma’s Retiring Project

What is Jack Ma going to do after he retires? He wants to build a school that trains Chinese private entrepreneurs. Jack Ma (Ma Yun), Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, mentioned his retirement dream of founding a “Whampoa Military Academy” of Chinese private entrepreneurs, aiming to teach them the right way to recruit, sack and increase productivity. His school will use a non-profit business model, and all tuition fees will be used for student training. If you’ve got a SME at least three years old with more than 30 employees, you should consider signing up when the school goes live.

Geely’s Auspicious Taobao Tactic

April 7 2011, Geely‘s “Global Eagle Flagship Store” opened online and customers can purchase Panda cars through Taobao. In order to distinguish between direct sales and online distribution channels, they only sell two colors online, but because of the differences in products, the online version costs an eye-popping RMB7,000 more! According to online marketing professionals, Geely’s expensive Taobao products are an attempt to create PR and generate sales, and well, we’re writing about them here, so I guess it worked. D’oh!

iPad 2, China welcomes you!

The news is in and the iPad 2 has passed the CCC (China Compulsory Certification), which means Chinese consumers are able to get the Wi-Fi version of this device in May, and the 3G version soon thereafter. In order to join the WTO, China issued a compulsory product certification system on Dec 3, 2001 and the CNCA (Certification and Accreditation Administration of the People’s Republic of China) is in charge of the certification applications of 132 products under 19 categories since May 1, 2002. In this case of iPad 2, the certification applicant is Apple Inc. while the manufacturer is Longhua Plant under Futai Industrial (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. With a duration of five years, the certificate ends on April 8, 2016.

Nokia is Going To Lay Off 6,000 People

After working together with Microsoft on mobile business, Nokia is very likely to start the largest layoff in the past 20 years. Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, declared on February 11 that they will be shifting business to Windows Phone 7 platform in the next two years, indicating the result would be a “large layoff.” That’s a big one to drop without hinting at any plans for what’s in store for Nokia’s employees. Antti Lean, a member of Finland’s trade union of the private enterprise “Pro” said that Nokia plans to announce the cuts in their R&D department at the end of April, cutting up to 6,000 people, which is 38% of this department. Nokia is currently denying this figure.

China Faces Down Facebook

Baidu has denied rumors that they will be joining forces with Facebok to tackle China. Baidu went on to say that that Facebook’s coming to China is still in the process of examination and approval, but that there’s no chance of success this year. Several barriers and limitations were cited by a certain source, like the fact that no matter with which Chinese company Facebook is going to cooperate with, the Chinese side must obtain a controlling interest; also, the server must be located in China and have independent operations, and finally, it cannot be hosted on the international site [editor’s note: this was very unclear in the Chinese statement]. Despite all that, the content review will be the toughest step. Let’s wish Facebook good, hoping that the millions of prayers of social network deprived office workers will bring about better luck for Facebook than for Google.