The Californian dream moves east. The Eldorado of new technologies, until now, has been Silicon Valley, the area south of San Francisco populated by small start-ups and web giants. Now the new frontier is played with smartphones. And US supremacy begins to be undermined by the new dragons arriving from the Far East, as the BBC reports today.
Three of the top 5 mobile phone manufacturers in the world come from the People's Republic. And, more precisely, from the same city: Shenzhen. A fishing village, not too far from Hong Kong, which in 1978, at the behest of Deng Xiaoping, became one of the special areas to experiment with the new economic reforms.
A metropolis of over 10 million inhabitants that hosts three giants such as Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE and which many see as the new Silicon Valley. And it's not just a matter of sales volume. ZTE is one of the most innovative groups in the world: last year alone it filed something like 50 patent applications.
Shenzen's success is not only linked to the 3 telephony giants, but also and above all to the other 6 manufacturers based in that area. The city produces the majority of China's mobile phones. And the People's Republic produces more than half of the 2 and a half billion devices sold worldwide every year.
Spending on research and development in China has grown rapidly, registering a +20% each year in the last 24 months. China now spends 217 billion euros a year. The United States, and their Silicon Valley, still hold the record: 326 billion euros. But for how much longer?
According to some analysts quoted by the BBC, Beijing should overtake Europe in 2018 and the US by 2022. In an exclusive interview with Linda Yueh, economics correspondent for the BBC, ZTE chairman Shi Lirong claims to spend 10% of proceeds in research and development.
The problem is that Chinese companies may be huge, but they are not globally famous names. In part, it is also due to the lack of diffusion in the largest market, the American one.
The responsibility, however, is not only in Beijing. To avoid the risk that the data exchanged on these cell phones "fall into the wrong hands" - something that happened, but "into the right hands", with the NSA scandal - the Washington government has forbidden Chinese groups from taking contracts with public bodies for reasons of national security.
Meanwhile, the People's Republic continues to conquer market shares. But it's still hard to say if and when the new Silicon Valley will definitely move east. A move that could not break the balance not only of technology, but of a much wider economic power.
