But I have to admit there are also a lot of useless copy-cat products on the market (not only in Asia). Those 'brands' will not survive because they won't offer an improvement.
Of course, one could make the argument that current first world countries will decline to the point where they can begin to compete on price just as the up-and-comers begin to charge more. It's already happening, to a limited degree, in autos. Some manufacturing has come back to the US in places where wages and taxes are low. The recent economic downturn has caused quite a few kinds of work to return to the US, including manufacturing that was taking place in China.
From what I've seen, 5 years is about the amount of time for major changes in trends to take place. A lot of companies can rise and fall in 5 years, which is the same amount of time it takes for a startup to come out of nowhere and then dominate the scene.
We haven't really seen China and India explode yet. I would even dare to say that a lot of people on HN haven't taken a close look at Chinese websites. Rhygar's comment not only applies to Samsung, but a lot of other companies we haven't even heard of in other countries. There are Chinese travel websites (e.g. qunar and huochepiao), auction sites (taobao), search engines (baidu), social networks (renren), made by really smart engineers who understand their local markets and cost a fifth to a third of what US software engineers cost--and when those companies make boatloads of cash in their own country, guess where they will start pushing out to?
I laughed when I went to Shanghai several years ago and saw all the urinals and toilets in the airport with the American Standard brand. Now, I see a lot of Toto (Japanese) branded toilets in American restaurants and public restrooms.
Nowhere. They're localized copies of services existing elsewhere. Their strength tends to be either localization or central government block on American competitors.
In a world of equal wages, there are still going to be local specialisms though. Not sure that it is fair to characterise that the richer countries make cooler stuff. Apple and Dell both make their products in China. Japan makes cool stuff that is only popular locally. Cultures have different attitudes to cool. There will still be diversity.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392106,00.asp
After all, they manufacture tons of components that go into these devices. It's not hard to take a part that someone else designed and stamp your own brand on it.
In the past, American products were regarded as the best and Made in USA meant quality. Next were Japanese products and consumer electronics. Starting 5-10 years ago, I began to see the well-regarded brands like Sony and Toshiba become more of a boutique brand (overpriced compared to what it offered) as they focused more on style than functionality. Most recently, products from China and Korea-based companies (Haier, Samsung, LG, Hyundai) have started to become more mainstream.
This just shows that there will always be up-and-coming competitors who will out-hustle, out-engineer, and out-build the previous market dominators if they don't keep innovating and staying fresh. The smaller competitors, given enough time, will catch up.