The World is Making Lemonade
While it is all too common for us to look at our current economy and express dissatisfaction, the world is actually experiencing mixed results. Although, overall wealth is down the number of individuals with over $1,000,000 has increased with the largest number now found in Asia. The Asia-Pacific region has 3.37 million millionaires compared to 3.35 million in North America and 3.17 in Europe. Although, North America is in second place when considering quantity, its millionaires still lead the world in value or assets at $11.4 trillion followed by Asia with $10.7 and Europe at $10.1. Now the reason for discussing the subject of wealth is because it is very important to recognize that the US is not the center of the universe when it comes to consumption. Today China’s middle class exceeds that of the total US population and is expected to grow to 600 million by 2025 followed by India with a projected 583 million according to McKinsey Global Institute.
For IP Communications this means that products, services and systems will need to address an increasingly important and growing international audience. Consider that in the B2B space Cisco, and Juniper face growing competition from Huawei as it works to expand its enterprise offerings beyond Asia into the North America and Europe. Moreover, while the iPhone is the talk of the US, the BlackBerry is still doing well in the UK and Europe and Samsung leads in units of smartphones sold globally. In fact, I just upgraded my cell phone to a Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone over the weekend.
With 2.4 billion Internet users able to access consumer and business products anywhere and anytime, thinking globally is strategically important. Times are tough for many but the world’s economies have not stopped. From the lemons represented by Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy, some are still making lemonade.
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