Consumer and business confidence in Europe and the US is down. Even McDonald’s, the fastfood eatery that ensures students can afford meat for dinner, is worried about the impact of the gloom on its profits. It’s ugly out there.
However, let’s take a moment to reflect on the longer term, and more global, picture. Also we need to meet our quota of one positive news story per week. Courtesy of UBS, here’s how consumption of certain white goods generally evolves as the GDP per capital for a country increases (using data from Euromonitor as well as their own):
Since GDP per capita has been increasing for emerging market countries…
… consumption of aforementioned white goods has gone up. Lining up the general result in the first graph with the current state of play (click to expand):
Concerning the leapfrogging of technologies implied by the appearance of mobile phones before PCs:
New technology as old technology. Next was the pace of adoption of technology goods at much lower income levels than we had ever seen. Leapfrogging over fixed line telephony consumers adopted mobile telephones at record rates, aided by falling prices of phones.
Breakdown of hard data on actual mobile ownership:
Any more positive news for us about what the future may hold? (We’d like more please. The eurozone crisis has been getting us down.)
India, Indonesia and Philippines are the last countries in the MSCI Emerging Markets index with a PPP GDP per capita below $5,000, the level at which demand for basic goods is highest. All three should pass, within five years, the $5,000 per capita threshold at which consumption of discretionary goods increases. There are 1.5 billion people living in these three countries alone.
Fingers crossed that works out.
Now time for some additional graphs, just cause graphs are awesome.
The people who stare at coloured screens:
Who also nuke their food:
And then can’t be asked to wash the dishes afterwards:
Related link:
Beyondbrics – the FT’s EM hub
