4 ms·

I agree. Another anecdotal claim is, "Singapore and Hong Kong tend to be, from an electronics perspective, leading indicators on what is going to be hot in West

by NoPiece 14y ago

I agree. Another anecdotal claim is, "Singapore and Hong Kong tend to be, from an electronics perspective, leading indicators on what is going to be hot in Western Europe and North America, as well as what is going to take off in the region." That may be true in some things, but it wasn't true of iPhone adoption. How about some good examples where Singapore and Hong Kong lead trends that became big in Western Europe and North America?

cageface 14y ago
Having lived in Asia for the last two years I don't find this hard to believe at all. There's an energy in the air here I don't feel anywhere in the U.S. and Europe. America's global cultural hegemony is pretty much guaranteed to diminish over time too. As more and more of the Asian middle and upper classes emerge they're going to drive demand for Asian cultural products. You can already see this happening with the global appeal of Korean pop music and Hong Kong cinema, for example.
- NoPiece 14y ago
  I have a ton of respect for both Singapore and Hong Kong, and would love the opportunity to live and work in Singapore. I just don't see them as exporters of consumer electronics trends. I think it is for a couple reasons. One is that a lot of consumer electronics devices are content oriented, and domestic content has shaped the ecosystem (e.g., music -> itunes -> ipod). The other is scale. Japan has been the biggest influencer in the past (Walkman, Nintendo). It was a big enough economy to have its own whole healthy video game industry that it could export over to the US. I think the growing influence of Korea correlates to the healthy growth of the size of economy since the 1997 asian fiscal crisis.
  - cageface 14y ago
    I don't see Singapore as an exporter of trends but more as a bellwether. As living standards in other Asian countries, at least among the affluent, approach the standard of Singapore's, it seems likely to me that we'll see trends first seen in SG repeated elsewhere.

by NoPiece 14y ago

cageface 14y ago

Having lived in Asia for the last two years I don't find this hard to believe at all. There's an energy in the air here I don't feel anywhere in the U.S. and Europe. America's global cultural hegemony is pretty much guaranteed to diminish over time too. As more and more of the Asian middle and upper classes emerge they're going to drive demand for Asian cultural products. You can already see this happening with the global appeal of Korean pop music and Hong Kong cinema, for example.

NoPiece 14y ago
I have a ton of respect for both Singapore and Hong Kong, and would love the opportunity to live and work in Singapore. I just don't see them as exporters of consumer electronics trends. I think it is for a couple reasons. One is that a lot of consumer electronics devices are content oriented, and domestic content has shaped the ecosystem (e.g., music -> itunes -> ipod). The other is scale. Japan has been the biggest influencer in the past (Walkman, Nintendo). It was a big enough economy to have its own whole healthy video game industry that it could export over to the US. I think the growing influence of Korea correlates to the healthy growth of the size of economy since the 1997 asian fiscal crisis.
- cageface 14y ago
  I don't see Singapore as an exporter of trends but more as a bellwether. As living standards in other Asian countries, at least among the affluent, approach the standard of Singapore's, it seems likely to me that we'll see trends first seen in SG repeated elsewhere.