My point is that today in software - especially consumer software - the USA is the reference market, the one the whole world looks up to to understand the most

My point is that today in software - especially consumer software - the USA is the reference market, the one the whole world looks up to to understand the most current trends. And my point is that I don’t necessarily accept that premise. I think you’re overgeneralizing. For example, I’m working on a start-up right now that provides an on-line training aid for ballroom dancers. Obviously that’s a niche market, and it turns out that this kind of dancing is insanely popular in some countries and almost unknown in others. Here’s the kicker in this case: there are two major variations of ballroom, which are known as “American style” and “International style”, for much the reasons you’d expect. If you’re looking for trends, you have to take that difference in the prevailing culture into account. Of course most markets won’t have quite such an obvious and US-centric polarisation as we happen to have in our field. I’m just trying to illustrate that in any kind of specialist market, you have to look at the local culture in different places, not just the language they speak and the size of the population.