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We did ethnographic research on smartphone usage in China back when I used to work for Intel, back in 2007. Even then, smartphone usage had penetrated the least educated segments. Blue-collar workers living six to a room were heavy users of smartphones, some were heavy gamers. The percentage of their income they spent on technology and entertainment was more than in the West. The growth rate was also amazing.

One of the reasons US-based startups grow so quickly is that the ones with traction here tap into a (relatively) homogeneous 300+ million market. A Chinese company with similar market share potential has tapped into about 4X that market. Growth rate is much faster in such a market, as opposed to global growth that has to deal with diverse sources of friction (e.g. Uber's challenges in London, Paris, etc. vs in the US).

The world is experiencing an inflection point. It will emerge 10 years from now very different from the world we are in now. This article sheds a lot of light on the world that will emerge on the other end. Thank you, Vivek Wadhwa!‎