On 15 Aug, Anthony Healy wrote:
>
>
> I wrote:
>> For example, our politicians sit back and glow that
>> we're "early technology adopters." In fact, all the
>> developed countries get fed this line in one way
>> or another. It's part of international marketing.
>
> Robert wrote:
>> The interesting point here is that whilst I was in
>> the US working with major IT companies (Red Hat's
>> strategic partners), our acceptance of new
>> technology was about the only thing they knew about
>> Australia.
>
>
> My eyebrows are raised at this, to be honest. All figures for penetration
> and usage of consumer devices show higher rates in the US, with trends
> typically 12 to 18 months ahead of Australia. PC's, consoles, phones,
> everything. Many other nations also have higher penetration figures than
> Australia, including Japan, Hong Kong and many of the northern European
> countries. The other developed nations have figures similar to Australia.
When you dig under the covers of this, what I was told was the many tech
companies in the US regard Australia as a really good test market for
high tech stuff.
We are similar enough to the US so that results here have an adequate
correlation to eventual results in the US, whilst we are small enough
and isolated enough to not matter if they screw things up in our market.
None of the other countries you mention meet the requirements of
similarity, isolation and small size.
-- Robert Hart hartr@redhat.com Red Hat Asia-Pacific, Unit 15, 23 James St, Brisbane, Qld 4006, Australia Tel +61 (0)7 3872 4808 Fax +61 (0)7 3257 4800
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