One of the things that Yiibu are very good at it is making presentations about important things: mobile first, progressive enhancement, and all that good stuff. Their latest, The Emerging Global Web, has some excellent and eye-opening information about Asia in particular.
The bits that I found particularly good had something in common: they’re all useful as refutations of “lower income people (usually on featurephones) don’t spend money using the web.” Yiibu’s presentations shows how people in China and Thailand are using a combination of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and WeChat to run their business. Not only that, but their business is a combination of an informal physical shop and an online shop. This combination is particularly good for rural businesses who can’t or won’t have a physical, heavy, bricks-and-mortar shop.
The presentation also provides a good reminder that we should be building for the future. A particular example they use is China, and its middle class that is growing very fast. This is already an important market, and will become more so as time goes on.
Last but not least: it looks like all the QR codes in the world have run away to China!
Check out the presentation on SlideShare for the full story and stats.