
China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech - nstj
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/technology/china-mobile-tech-innovation-silicon-valley.html
======
billconan
I grew up in China, and I'm now living in the bay area. I just went back for a
month for vacation. I too saw a more living mobile ecosystem.

and wechat is indeed in the center of this system. For example, a fruit stand
would now accept mobile payment via wechat. those who run fruit stands are
usually farmers.

I think it makes a lot of sense to build mobile payment into a a social app.
because any currency would require a social network. and transferring money is
a key social activity.

building independent mobile payment without the support from a mature social
network is a bad idea, for example square and apple pay (only useable in the
apple ecosystem, a partial mobile ecosystem).

China never seemed to have a credit card era, it jumped directly from paying
cash to paying with mobile. whereas in the U.S., credit card is so convenient,
people don't want to change.

for many years, wechat has been combining new features with its social
network, whereas whatsapp wanted to be a pure chatting app and missed many
opportunities.

you can use wechat to order food at restaurants, you can log into public wifi
with wechat ....

This is just one example. Another thing I noticed is online shopping. At the
gate of our apartment, each day, there are many deliver guys on tricycles.
They have a more efficient and cheap delivering system.

For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with
password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as
it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China,
you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet
doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the
cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.

This is not a complex idea, but hard to implement in the U.S., because we
don't have the same population density here. When you build an infrastructure
like this, you want to serve as many people as possible.

~~~
billconan
guess I should also write the other side of the story -- things I don't like
about China.

Overall, I feel that China is like the U.S. in its early days (1920s). Or the
1999 Silicon Valley

There are a lot of opportunities, but less rules. It's a jungle basically. For
people with tech depth and want to build something steadily, China is not the
best place.

a high percentage of young entrepreneurs there are just opportunists. They are
not interested in sitting down and building something useful. Instead, they
just want to quickly raise/burn money and go public.

There are way more theranos' there in China.

And you need to have connections to success in China. This is a historical and
cultural thing.

I don't know how many of you noticed the recent news of didi acquiring uber
China. The leaders of the two companies are actually from the same family. One
is the daughter of the Lenovo CEO. The other is the niece of him. Probably
coincidence，but you see coincidences more often in China.

My attitude towards China is that I take it seriously. I admit what it does
better. But I don't think I'm strong enough to fight in the jungle.

~~~
Asetsuna
To be fair, you can get success more easily in US if you have connections
which is the same as China. Maybe Bill Gate and his mother's background is a
similar example to what you referred about DiDi.

~~~
xiaoma
Don't be ridiculous. If it were actually the same, then Bill Gates could have
used his influence to get Netscape's site blocked from the internet or
depending on the depth of his connections with Bill Clinton at the time, get
Marc Andreessen thrown in prison.

For those who do manage to become billionaires, the game often becomes even
rougher: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-
dont...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-dont-let-
friends-become-chinese-billionaires/#749f921d11fd)

------
ting_bu_dung
This article has a pretty shallow definition on how China is 'cutting edge' in
mobile tech. Apparently cutting edge means:

a.) can do things without switching apps. (?!)

b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)

c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)

and the dominance confirmed by

a.) a single quote from kik founder (who is trying to convince people qr code
is...good?)

b.) bigger mobile user base (well of course, they have more people)

c.) uber lost in china (if you're a foreign company in China and you haven't
learned yet Chinese government only lets Chinese companies win, then...)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _a.) can do things without switching apps. (?!)_

This actually is "cutting edge" if you compare it to the bullshit we in the
West have to deal with daily. I have _way_ too much apps on my Android phone,
none of which can talk to each other (despite intents) and half of which
should be infrastructure-level anyway.

> _b.) uses QR codes (invented by Japan, popularized by Japan)_

... and almost completely ignored by Europe and the US. That they turned
something potentially useful into actually useful is interesting in its own
right.

> _c.) pay things on phone (invented by nokia, popularized in europe)_

Except it is 2016 and in Europe (and presumably in the US) it only barely
works somewhere, sometimes, for some things.

I mean, let's not play double standards - if it's entirely fair to call
Western companies (especially SV startups) "innovative" for wrapping something
common in a Bootstrap theme, or turning something that should be a product
into a butt service to extract rent from people, then it's entirely fair to
call China "cutting edge".

~~~
chrischen
QR codes is interesting. The tech companies here considered QR codes low tech
and backwards, ironically, and basically didn't invest in it in the hopes of
going with BLE (bluetooth low energy) beacons and at a time NFC.

NFC was considered inferior to BLE too but BLE has come and literally no one
uses them.

The reason why QR isn't adopted is because none of the major platforms has
invested in it. Apple, facebook, don't have native QR support.

In China QR is built into wechat, which everyone has.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think part of the reason both QR and BLE don't fare well in the West is
related to the point a), about doing things without switching apps. QR codes
and BLE beacons are things that should be interacted with on the OS level, not
requiring a separate app for every possible vendor that decides to use
codes/beacons. Alas, the primary application of BLE today is trying to trick
people into spending more on shoes and clothes. What a waste of a potentially
very useful technology.

~~~
tim333
When I had a look at the proposed BLE specs for iPhone I was disappointed that
it seemed an app could only see it's own beaons. I'd quite like an app that
could show any beacons around and say who's they are and if there are any
offers or cool stuff associated. I think as it is store A's beacons can only
be seen with store A's app and store B's only with store B's and who wants
that?

------
hokkos
Sorry but this article is not honest. All the example here have counter-
examples of USA first apps.

lot of apps used QR code since the iPhone had apps, Uber hail ride is present
in several apps since long, Google Maps, CityMapper, ... There are apps to
order pizza. Live streaming video app like justin.tv, ustream or livestream
Tinder is not the first dating app, it just popularized a new model to begin a
conversation : the double validation model, Badoo or Grindr existed long
before.

The WeChat model is NOT great, it means a monopoly on apps, they can remove
you from their micro app store if they want like they did with Uber and remove
you from the country. We are far better with an equalitarian app store like
Play Store or (in lesser ways) the App Store. I think WeChat is the result of
the pseudo banning of the Play Store in China, and it should NOT be a thing of
desire.

~~~
guelo
I had not heard about Wechat removing Uber. Do you have a link on that topic?

~~~
AJ007
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougyoung/2015/07/20/tencent-
snu...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/dougyoung/2015/07/20/tencent-snuffs-out-
uber-on-wechat/)

------
Zafira
To get anything done in China there must be some sort of state sponsorship.
Just look at the crackdown on original journalism recently. This intentionally
causes only a few approved firms to prosper and allows for these ecosystem
apps to flourish.

I find it hard pressed to take seriously the claim that being able to live in
the WeChat app is an innovation. I can certainly see the appeal to companies
interviewed by the New York Times like Facebook and Kik who probably look at
that kind of usage model enviously, but I think it's important to note that
the use of non-Chinese services is _not_ looked upon highly by the Party and
this can be seen as an expression of regional favoritism. As much as Facebook
would hope you live and breathe in their ecosystem 24/7, 365, it's harder to
get away with that in places outside of China.

~~~
nstj
I think the "living in a WeChat ecosystem" proposition doesn't hold much
appeal from a user perspective, but from the perspective of companies looking
to build apps it can be quite appealing. Native development is very expensive,
and being able to plug in to a platform with identity, location, payments and
social network is a huge win for a company looking to get a product out
quickly and cheaply.

~~~
TeMPOraL
IMO it holds very much appeal from the user perspective - tight integration of
various services is a big win, and it's something we in the west don't enjoy -
with each company trying to steal your attention for themselves, instead of
cooperating to build actually useful ecosystem of tools.

~~~
nstj
Oh yeah, I should have qualified that with "developing applications in non-
native code for native platforms doesn't have much appeal from a user
perspective". ie: it would be great if the Official Account apps available
through WeChat were native (and users would like that) but they're not;
broadly speaking, webviews are typically less appealing than native layout. I
100% agree that the tight integration of services is a _big_ win from the
perspective of a user.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Ok, I'll agree with your clarified point. Personally I'm alergic to webviews,
I can immediately tell which application is native and which is a thin layer
on top of the browser, by the very virtue of the latter sucking hard.

~~~
nstj
A "long press" on a link in an app can often assist in separating the native
"wheat" from the webview "chaff".

------
pipio21
I have lived in China for some time and I am kind of tired of refuting
nytimes, washingtonpost propaganda about China.

Everything you read on those newspapers is about propaganda, propaganda to
influence most small investors(what they call dumb money)on one of the
financial centers of the world New York, or propaganda to influence
politicians on the US political center of US, Washington.

The elite financial industry that rules USA really admires China
authoritarianism.

China is an enormous country with lots of great things, but innovation is not
one of their "fortes". There is a big bubble there that is going to do bang
and is not going to be pretty.

Not so good important things about China( that of course the propaganda
omits):

-Their internet is shit, capped by Government and closed to the outside world.

-There is an army of spies(more than a million) working for the State, everything you do is controlled.

\- There is way less women than men because the Government let people
basically kill girls with selective abortion or after being born.

-They are communist, the interest of the individual is always subordinated to the community. If you have a girl with a Chinese woman outside China when you visit China they can refuse to let the girl go out. China needs girls.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Why is being communist bad for innovation?

In 40 years, the Soviet Union went from a medieval-like society with 95% of
the people being peasants working their lords' lands, to inventing LEDs, grid-
scale nuclear power, orbital launches, artificial satellites, manned space
flight, commercial supersonic flight, seminal work in transplantation and
artificial organs, etc. It became the second world superpower in science and
innovation, which by the way, it no longer isn't after the fall of communism.

It was pretty much an economic miracle, like the so-called "German miracle"
and "Japanese miracle", although of course most current thinkers won't
recognize it because Communism is Bad(tm) and it seems we can only think in
black and white (as the Soviet Union had an autochratic and murderous regime,
apparently we can't say what they did right).

So I don't think the statement that communism is bad for innovation holds
water historically. It's bad for other things, but not necessarily for
innovation.

~~~
BigDaddyD
I can't believe we are still debating about Communism in this day and age
because it has been proven inferior in every way but...

Communism is bad for innovation for two major, connected, reasons. First,
there is very little, if any, competition. Most innovation comes from trying
to beat the other guy and there just isn't any competition in a system that
wants the state to run everything. Second, entrepreneur's are non-existent
because there is no way for them to make money off of their inventions outside
of cozying up with the State.

Also, your point about them moving from a medieval society to a modern one is
ironic considering the USSR's pathetic technology. Outside of military
applications they were failing in almost every single way. Just read some
stories about the East Germans trying to flee to West Germany or the USSR's
Olympic team visiting the US and thinking that our grocery stores were fake
because of all of the food.

~~~
DominikR
Well their scientific output (not only for military applications) was actually
very high, but they already had a great scientific community before Communism.

If they didn't then they wouldn't have been able to keep up for such a long
time and Russia today couldn't be such a big geopolitical adversary to this
day.

If they had not implemented Communism after WWI I believe they could have been
a second US.

~~~
BigDaddyD
I think we are in agreement. Russia has done fairly well in spite of their
past economic system and today would be far better off if they had adopted
our, American, system.

------
erdevs
Traveling to major cities in China (and Korea) is like a preview of where the
US will be in ~5 years from a technology-society integration perspective. Easy
payments on your phone, electronic communications for official
notices/correspondences, mobile-electronic interactions with government,
many/most people playing games and socializing about them, non-personal-car
transportation (taxis/didis, buses, bikes), hyper-dense cities as populations
urbanize.

It makes sense that China (and Korea) have leaped ahead. They have relatively
high average IQ populations. They have cultures that celebrate education,
intelligence, and hard work (not sports and broism). They have heavy
governmental investment in infrastructure (eg internet, cell networks) and
they heavily regulate industries so as not to stymie utilities such as the
internet.

Hopefully the US and Europe can create a cultural shift (particularly the US
on this front) and can see more government investment in infrastructure for
technology and ease of access. If so, the US/Europe will maintain/grow their
competitive edges vs China at least, as they have better property rights,
fairer courts, more developed financial markets, more meritocracy of
opportunity, etc. Korea has the best of all worlds in many ways, but not a
large enough population or enough natural resources to be a contender for one
of the top few economic powers in the world.

~~~
pjc50
> leaped ahead

I think there's a big element of not being handicapped by 'legacy'
infrastructure here. The US won't roll out chip+pin because it already has
magswipe POS systems in too many places. Whereas places in China which have
_no_ existing system can deploy whichever is most convenient to get started
with - which sounds like wechat at the moment.

~~~
eddieplan9
This.

When the West moved toward a thriving ecosystem of web applications, the web
scene in China was a complete mess. Not many people were confident enough to
use the Web, let alone trust a random website with their bank account which
has no dispute channel. Plus the web is full of malware and scams and almost
all PC ran pirated Windows XP with abysmal if any antivirus software.

When most people equated internet with the IE icon, people in China did it
with the dorminating IM software made by Tencent.

The explosion of mobile ecosystem speaks to the lackluster of a thriving web
ecosystem and to some degree a clunky financial system and lack of meaningful
consumer protection.

------
paradite
The article pretty much sums up my experience living abroad as a Chinese.

A few years ago when renren.com was still the most popular social media for
Chinese users, it was filled with people __sharing __funny pictures and
videos, interesting news and discussing trending topics automatically
suggested by the site.

Around that time on Facebook though, people are still posting their vacation
photos, text status updates and nothing more. Nobody was __sharing __anything
on the platform.

Now Facebook has became Renren No.2, while Renren lost to WeChat.

~~~
clw8
Renren had already lost to QQ Space before Wechat existed. Which I find
hilarious, the Myspace clone where you can annoy viewers with auto-playing
music and atrocious Javascript beat out the Facebook clone.

~~~
paradite
As far as I know, QQ Space was way earlier than renren. It was renren that
beat QQ Space. Many of my friends followed the migration path of QQ Space ->
renren -> WeChat.

------
yyyuuu
It's sad to see the recurring condescending attitude of HN crowd towards China
and it's recent (and well deserved) technological prowess. C'mon guys, all
said and done, China is kicking ass. You've got to give credit where it's due.

Cutting edge or not, the next century will be driven by China simply because
the momentum that they have generated.

The only thing that still remains a red flag for me is China's lack of
democracy and political instability that may come due to it.

~~~
tylerty
Ok we should give credits to China:

\- stole most techs from us/Japan/Europe

\- innovated...nothing

\- copied apple products down to the last screw

\- prevented Google and Facebook to compete, even though they claimed to be
open market to wto

As for your momentum, don't forget the trillions of state debt, the wto
membership expiring this year, xi the dictator closing down news channels,
billions in capital outflow

~~~
pjmlp
While it might be true in modern times regarding copying, Europe and US also
did take a lot from them in past centuries and looking at historical
documents, we didn't always pay for it.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Industrial revolution started in the US by stealing IP from the UK. Heck, even
writing were stolen by much of the world from its (few) inventors.

~~~
TeMPOraL
All of which seems to point out that the very concept of "stealing IP" (and IP
in general) is ridiculous.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It is definitely controversial. We need some protection, limited time
ostentatious seem reasonable, or there might not be an incentive to invent.

------
chj
Wechat/Alipay change China a lot. Now I rarely use credit card. Not all gas
stations accept credit card, but every one of them happily takes wechat. In
many restaurants you can order in wechat and pay with it.

Not that I love the idea of a monolithic app controlling everything in our
life, but the next big thing to take its place need to live up to its level of
convenience.

------
ausjke
I travel often to China, yes not just Mobile Tech, but also many fronts it is
taking the lead. The bottom line, East Asia has the highest average IQ on the
globe, and China produces almost 4x engineer degrees each year of what US has.

With globalization in a world that is flat, and the extremely hard working
attitude plus education-first tradition there, the future looks great on its
side.

In US, we're dealing with so many social issues while other countries are
catching up on many key fronts.

~~~
cft
Here the ideological elite is set out to prove that everybody is equally
capable, and IQ is a construct. The creation of value is increasingly being
replaced by value redistribution among the poorest and value transference
among the upper middle classes. In corporations, professional management is
replacing value creation with politics and stupid games. Yesterday I watched
two people launching a professional DJI Inspire drone. The iPad app for this
drone is more complicated than Airbnb or Uber apps. I am not talking about the
drone itself.. DJI is a Chinese drone company with a billion dollar revenue.
The consequences of these trends will be rather grim for the American economy
in 30 years. I expect to get about -7 karma for this , since denial is the
crucial part of the problem.

~~~
ximeng
"Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce
that you expect to get downvoted."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
snowwrestler
I think most of the innovations and trends mentioned in this article are also
true in Africa and India: primacy of the smartphone over computer, importance
of chat apps, daily functions like payments integrated into the phone, etc.

The common thread is that each area has had millions of people ascend into the
middle class after cell and then smartphones were "good enough" to replace
landlines and PCs.

------
DelaneyM
Software is a hit-based business on which winners scale very large, very fast.

All other things (education, market) being equal, the biggest pool should
generate the most hits, and the most advancement.

~~~
jomamaxx
"All other things (education, market) being equal, the biggest pool should
generate the most hits, and the most advancement. reply"

The problem is there are many, many, many factors. Too many to count.

'Education' \- even that is hardly comparable. Rote learning/memorization, a
culture of copying vs. a culture of learning in innovation. I'm not saying one
is better or that one country is necessarily more of the other, just giving
one small example of quite radically differentiation even in one comparable
vertical.

It's really hard to compare US and China tech side by side.

I think it's best to just look at them independently.

------
mc32
And I hope they become number one in journalism because frankly the NYT is a
shell of its former self. It's more of "all the news fit for clickbait" rather
than print.

~~~
frozenport
I'm upvoting this post, the article reads like sponsored content is rife with
factual inaccuracies. Not sure if Paul Mozur is a shill (must be hard to
report the truth from Dongcheng) or just incompetent.

~~~
linkregister
I disagree with the assessment of shillage. It's just another article in the
vein of "scary Orientals and their Tiger Moms are outperforming us!" Mozur's
article would better be categorized as a lazy sensation article.

A sliver of merit exists in the article; Chinese internet companies do match
American ones when it comes to scaling their infrastructure. Many Chinese
software developers, designers, and architects are similarly talented as their
American counterparts.

Otherwise, this department-store-esque vertical integration of different
features is just an artifact of the domination of fewer players with SOE
connections and not a sign of dominant innovation. Is payment provider lock-in
really something the rest of the world wants to emulate? At least American
consumers can choose between 3 major credit companies.

Could you point out the inaccuracies? Aside from the QR code non-sequitor,
nothing jumped out at me.

~~~
peyton
> Could you point out the inaccuracies? Aside from the QR code non-sequitor,
> nothing jumped out at me.

It's an article about homegrown internet services that does not mention the
Great Firewall, as you alluded to somewhat. Given the myriad reasons listed
for the services' success, this could be considered by some as a lie by
omission.

------
bogomipz
I feel that this is a typical NY Times tech puff piece:

"Already in China, more people use their mobile devices to pay their bills,
order services, watch videos and find dates than anywhere else in the world.
Mobile payments in the country last year surpassed those in the United
States."

Yes this tends to happen when you have a population of 1.2 billion people
compared to 330 million.

Also seeing how outside of the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong you
need a VPN(and even this is a constant game of whack-a-mole) to access
Facebook and Google, it's hardly a level playing field. Economic nationalism
in China has been discussed pretty extensively at this point.

"But China’s tech industry — particularly its mobile businesses — has in some
ways pulled ahead of the United States. Some Western tech companies, even the
behemoths, are turning to Chinese firms for ideas."

Nowhere in the article does it go on to substantiate how they have "pulled
ahead." Have they pulled ahead by using QR codes? By using dating apps? Have
they pulled ahead because of in app purchasing? (Hello, Uber Eats?)

Different cultures respond differently to different services, this is
evidenced by US/European music streaming apps that have had a real difficult
time getting traction in the Asian market. Does this mean they have "pulled
ahead" and are now setting the pace? Perhaps ocal entrepreneurs understand
their local market and culture better?

------
alvarosm
the censorship brigade killed this post from someone else so, reposting (he's
mostly right):

Ugh, this US/China dichotomy makes for good headlines but I hope the good
people of the actual tech industry are able to see beyond it. The supporting
examples are ripe with confirmation bias: - Yes, MoMo is older than Tinder but
Badoo is older than MoMo - Drones took off worldwide - "walkie-talkie" =
sending audio messages are you kidding me - QR codes were tried and not
adopted by consumers in EU a century ago (recall the Economist being all up in
arms about how they were going to revolutionize everything back in 08), no
wonder companies were reluctant to bring them back

Yes, Messenger surely wants to become wx but with a user base that's
infinitely more fragmented -- it's going to take infinitely longer to launch a
global payments solution that partners with all banks everywhere and obeys all
regulations.

You know why apps start in wx? Because there is no single app store.

Yes -- China has some awesome mobile stuff going on, but this whole "TIL
Chinese people also use the internet and it has other stuff???" fascination is
just sad.

------
halfelf
In CHN, lacking of credit card and personal credit records make internet
industry find a efficient and fast way to receive payments —— that's why
alipay and other third party payment such popular. Although just some Paypal
copies in the beginning, they are such behemoths now.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I keep hearing this thing about lack of credit cards in China being one of the
reasons Alipay and, later, WeChat payments, took off. But I don't see how
credit cards are relevant here.

It takes 15 minutes to open a bank account and get a bank card which can be
used at ATMs, POS transactions, and online. 'No credit card' doesn't mean 'no
bank card'.

What am I missing?

~~~
zhuzhuor
It basically means the lacking of credit systems and mature fraud detections.
If you lose your (credit) card or leak your credit card number, the bank won't
probably reimburse your financial losses. Compared to credit cards, mobile
payments may be more secure.

~~~
jacquesm
That may well be true but why compare them with credit cards at all? Debit
cards have all those functions and a _much_ lower fraud incidence.

------
daemonk
Sounds like the greatest advantage China has is a non-segmented software eco-
system where a few companies dominate the market with apps that can do many
things. In contrast to the US where companies focus on just a few key features
and users have multiple apps doing various tasks.

There are definitely pros and cons of both ecosystems. But from the common
everyday user's perspective, I can see how China's ecosystem is more user
friendly. Perhaps that's also why they have traditionally non-tech savvy
adopters (farmers, fruit stand owners) using these apps.

------
jaxondu
China has the advantage of adoption en mass of mobile tech due mainly majority
people has access to the net via mobile. Mobile payment is common. And they
have a whole money making industry build on top of live tv apps (like vine,
periscope). Scale and speed of adoption are keys. China has less tech people
who're fixate to certain "ideology" such as JavaScript everywhere, HTML5 for
everything, functional all the way etc. They just choose the tech that makes
money. China is cutting edge in making use of tech to make money.

------
Steven_Bukal
"in China, its three major internet companies — Alibaba, Baidu and the WeChat
parent Tencent — compete to create a single app with as many functions as they
can stuff into it"

It's not obvious to me that this is a good thing. Doesn't this just pass the
buck down from the phone's operating system and app ecosystem to the do-
everything-app's ecosystem? I'd sooner see mobile OS and app software improve
their inter-app communication and APIs so that the do-everything app isn't
necessary.

------
mark_l_watson
A little off topic, but non-tech people in the USA seem to have
unrealistically negative views of China's tech abilities. Yesterday morning 4
non-tech friends and I were getting our exercise working in our community
garden and all 4 of them were going on about how far advanced the USA was
compared to China. I pointed out that at least in my field, a good fraction of
new research papers are from Chinese researchers and I also gave them the
example of WeChat pay.

------
pinaceae
WeChat is the old AOL/Compuserve concept on mobile, nothing more,nothing less.

An abstraction layer on the Internet, needed for China due to the langauge
barrier of the Western/English-language Internet/WWW.

Most of the stuff the West uses on the Internet is utterly useless for Chinese
(also due to blockage by the Great Firewall), hence a walled garden makes
perfect sense.

------
Asetsuna
I don't think China's mobile tech is leading the world rather than Silicon
Valley. Most cutting edge of mobile tech is still sourced from US or EU. But
you have to admit China's big companies and Alibaba and Tencent or some
unicorns really integrate techs, business and people's life better and faster.

------
option
mobile was _the next big thing_ ten years ago and US was the key innovator
there. Now SV has next _next big things_ around AI and VA/AR and is certainly
leading and going to lead here. So it is not surprising that SV might not be
leading in mobile anymore, even though such a claim is still questionable

~~~
duaneb
Baidu is no as slouch. Most of the Bay Area is much closer to mobile than
ai/vr. I don't think we value mobile in the US; many with money are resistant
to change. Some people still don't use email and are shocked(!) when retail
stores now require one to ship to the home address.

I'll admit, I've never gotten Apple Pay to work myself. The interface is
confusing as hell; I prefer cash or plastic.

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isuckatcoding
Arright time to include China for my job search then. Question: how well do
the jobs in China pay? Can an English speaking person survive there?

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Animats
When will Foxconn realize they don't need Apple?

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jsn117
when will Foxconn become too expensive to make sense to Apple?

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known
"China is now low-cost, high-quality" \--Jack Ma

