I'm not disagreeing with anything you said but I suppose I am more commenting on the difference in attitude and execution. While services like Android/Watsapp

I'm not disagreeing with anything you said but I suppose I am more commenting on the difference in attitude and execution. While services like Android/Watsapp were created in the West and do service the lower end market, they still follow the "leader", isn't seen by the population as "cool/hip/etc." Even with credit cards, there are many merchants here that don't accept them (especially Amex) and Visa because of the prohibitive fees. The attitude in America is, define your market (high end/low end) and then extract the absolute amount of wealth you can, and defend your market share by any means possible. In contrast, as you saw with the busker in the article, when it is rolled out in China, it is truly (almost) for everyone. They try to use economics of scale to get everyone on board so the entire nation is moving as a collective. Another example is the high speed rail; I recall reading an article that even though wages doubled, the fares didn't budge at all. It just allowed more and more people to take advantage of a good service. In America, you'd bet they try to increase fares as much as possible to extract as much as possible out of the consumer. Obviously there are problems, as with inferior phones, but when everyone is on board, there is an acceleration in innovation and they start solve those problems. Then you see things like people wanting higher end models and companies are forced to innovate. A company like Xiaomi which dominated suddenly drops to 4th place and needs to innovate - that is a sign of a healthy market.