The New Technology Elite: How Great Companies Optimize Both Technology Consumption and Production

Chapter 9

Mobile: If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Xiamen

The National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 report is chock full of facts and figures about the global technology landscape and it summarizes:

Science and technology (S&T) are no longer the province of developed nations; they have, in a sense, become “democratized.” Governments of many countries have firmly built S&T aspects into their development policies as they vie to make their economies more knowledge- and technology-intensive and, thereby, ensure their competitiveness in a globalizing world. These policies include long-term investments in higher education to develop human talent, infrastructure development, support for research and development, attraction of foreign direct investment and technologically advanced multinational firms, and the eventual development of indigenous high-technology capabilities.”¹

In fact, we live in a world where economists are furiously rethinking global trade and deficit definitions to handle scenarios like these:

By any definition, the iPhone belongs to the high-tech products category, where the U.S. has an indisputable comparative advantage. In effect, the PRC (China) does not domestically produce any products that could compete with iPhones. The U.S. also has an absolute advantage in the smartphone category. Ricardian theory and Hecksher-Olin theory would suggest the U.S. should export iPhones to the PRC, but in fact the PRC exports iPhones to the U.S. All ready-to-use ...