hello delight

There is an interesting piece in the Economist today about the number of PCs per person in several different countries:

"NORTH AMERICA will have the most personal computers (PCs) per person in 2010, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s forecasts. With nearly one per person, PC ownership in America and Canada far exceeds that in the rest of the world. Globally, PC penetration will continue to rise closer to one computer for every three people. Western Europeans have nearly 70 PCs per 100 people."

Controlling for income disparities and infrastructure, that's an awful lot of PCs for us Yanks.  

The fact that the percentage of PC ownership is dominated by the US isn't all that surprising.  Our culture was built for the web, presumably the primary use of these PCs - highly individualized, acheivement oriented, low power distance, future focused.

What this study implies to me is a couple things:
1) The PC is still the most effecient way to access the web in our country.  The mobile devices are gaining, as are internet-enabled devices, but the PC is still king.  The PC trend seems to be towards in-home portablility which is fantastic for marketers.  We're nearing the stage of simultaneous media consumption and the PC will be a critical component of that.
2) Ownership culture is alive and well.  This is very interesting in light of the macro factors facing our country.  We are still willing to purchase a quickly depreciating asset when other scenarios (cafes, leases) may exist.  This is interesting because with ownership comes increased density - it's hard to get rid of PCs.  More PCs end up as hand-me-downs.  Over a short time, we'll see the age of first ownership decrease dramatically as mom and dad upgrade their planned obscelence netbooks and such.