Look out world – here come digital downloads!
This post on Egypt’s problems with network outages seemed mundane when I first read it. But then I read between the lines: Movie downloads are seriously impacting a developing country’s day-to-day economy!
When I think of Egypt’s economy, digital entertainment doesn’t come to mind. Yet digital content has risen to a top economic priority due to unexpected but very understandable infrastructure problems. Why is this such a big deal? Because it’s evidence that third-world economies and their resulting digital needs will not lag the developed countires nearly as much as one might think.
The developing world is on a unique digital infrastructure path, bringing many poorer, high-population countries much more rapidly into the Digital World than their more economically developed brethren in the Americas, Asia and Europe.
This reminds me of conversations I had last week with our India team on the huge size of the Indian movie industry. It goes way beyond Bollywood. Indian production companies are today producing a disproportionate share of the world’s video content, and cinemas throughout India are converting to digital distribution at a rapid pace.
The lesson here is that the Digital Age is a global phenomenon that will be driven more and more by population size than by per capita income.
[…] Broader use of content. Hundreds of millions of additional people are using digital content in their daily lives due to developing global economies and new all-digital infrastructures. […]
[…] in Brazil, Russia, India and China. Most of the planet’s population is in countries where millions of digital consumers will be created even in tough […]
[…] in Brazil, Russia, India and China. Most of the planet’s population is in countries where millions of digital consumers will be created even in tough […]