Intel did it again. The Q4-numbers of the technology bellwether beat the expectations of the analysts as they did in many quarters before (blogs.barrons) (marketwatch).

The chip goliath benefited from the growth in emerging markets. During the earnings call with the analysts (you can find the transcript here seekingalpha) Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini explained (seekingalpha): "Emerging markets now account for 2 out of every 3 incremental units of PC demand, a shift that's rewarding Intel and the PC companies that have a long-standing, deep presence in these markets".

Otellini declared further:" Looking back at the last 12 months of reported data, emerging markets like India and Indonesia grew 22% and 37%, respectively. China, now the largest PC market in the world, represents 20% of all PC demand, and grew a remarkable 15%".

The Intel CEO believes that the rapid growth will continue to drive his business in the coming years: "China has a household penetration rate of just 35%, versus almost 90% in the U.S. China is the world's largest market for mobile phones with more than 950 million subscribers. It's also at the forefront of the smartphone boom and will be the home of the world's first 32-nanometer smartphone".

These quotes show that emerging markets fuel the growth of the global economy, especially of the technology sector. I believe that this growth will continue many years because of the adaption process in many regions of the globe. The people in China, India and plenty of other countries want to adapt to Western standards of living as fast as possible.

The adaption process gets boosted by Moore´s law (wikipedia), which describes the long term trend of rapidly falling prices for technology because of the rapid technological progress. Therefore more and more companies & consumers in the emerging markets can afford to buy computers, tablets, smartphones and other internet connected devices for expanding their business or improving their leisure time activities.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB108053260585367678

Intel Corp. senior researcher Genevieve Bell makes a science out of being nosy. As a cultural anthropologist for the American microchip giant, she has spent the last two and a half years hanging out in 100 homes across seven Asian countries, watching how ordinary folks tinker with computers and gadgets. "Intel research believes that trying to understand the patterns of people's behavior is a basic science question, like physics," says Ms. Bell, 36 years old.
From her piles of notebooks and snapshots, Ms. Bell has come to some conclusions with serious implications for technology makers and marketers: Globalization is not going to produce a globally uniform consumer, because gadgets such as cellphones and Wi-Fi laptops are being used in different ways around the world.
WSJ: Why does Intel want an anthropologist to take on this kind of project?
Ms. Bell: I'm trying to get a better sense of the ways in which cultural practices in urban Asia are shaping people's relationships with technology. I'm trying to think about whether there is a global middle class out there -- or whether, in fact, although there are people who have certain kinds of disposable income and might look middle-class, they are in fact doing and desiring differently.
WSJ: What did you discover that's useful to Intel and other technology companies?
Ms. Bell: The places where people are consuming technology look really different from the places where we created them, and that has consequences for how they are used ... . The kinds of constellations of users are different, too. America is a culture of individuals. Our technology is predicated on that: I want my own laptop, I have my own cellphone -- stuff that I own is tied to me and a way of getting to just me ... . But in Asia, people's identities are not just about themselves as individuals....The self is part of a family and a lineage and a clan or a village. Often, technology is consumed at those levels rather than an individual level. And that has consequences from how you brand things, to how you accommodate multiple users on a single device.
There are some usage models that we hadn't very well anticipated. In Asia, there is much more of an emphasis on education, on family communication, on forms of social reciprocity, as a portal to your government, as well as around religion....It's not about rational productivity or just entertainment.
WSJ: Is there a global middle-class technology consumer?
Ms. Bell: Yes, there are people around the world using technology who, on the surface of it, look like they might be middle-class. But if you go into those homes and watch, what they are doing is very different from what might be going on in the U.S. So the challenge is how do you create technology that supports that diversity of experiences and that doesn't in some ways support one set of experiences at the expense of another.
WSJ: What are global brands going to look like in 20 years? A lot of people think globalization means the world is going to become one.
Ms. Bell: Globalization in that way just hasn't happened. Certainly things move much faster than they used to. Information and objects show up in more places than they ever have been....But people are uncoupling these objects like technology from the West. For example, the Chinese government is supporting a Web site in Shanghai called ev991.com, which is an online burial site for creating private memorials for your relatives. It looks distinctively Chinese, and has all the iconography that you'd want on a traditional family shrine ... . These are used in Singapore, too. Last year, around the traditional Ching Ming (grave sweeping) period, the Singapore government asked a lot of people to do this online because they were worried about disease spreading. Nobody would imagine that in the U.S.
WSJ: Why has Wi-Fi and Intel's Centrino wireless-laptop technology caught on more quickly in Asia than in the U.S.?
Ms. Bell: Part of it has to do with underlying cultural factors. In China and India and across Asia, you will find a very different sensibility about how you use technology in public, and about the notion of publicly available and shared resources. It is totally unimaginable to Americans that you would have a public cellphone-charging station. All they can imagine is that technology sells them something that they can personally use, not access something which is publicly shared.
WSJ: What are the cultural lessons from Centrino for Intel?
Ms. Bell: The lesson is to pay a little bit more attention to what is going on in local environments. Don't just assume that what works in the U.S. will work everywhere. And don't assume that Americans are going to be the first to do things anymore.