I lived in Togo for 2 years and I noticed this. My go-to example was music: they skipped records, 8 tracks, cassette tapes, cds, and everyone went straight to having music on their phone.
In second-world countries like mine, we didn’t skip technologies much but avoided format wars and just ended up with the winner:
Betamax VHS
MiniDisc USB flash storage, SD cards
iTunes YouTube and pirated MP3s
HD DVD Blu-ray − just kidding, piracy again for most
Game consoles PC because it’s cheaper to stay up-to-date with hardware and games (not everyone though)
If tech moves too fast, people get annoyed. Up until 2008, one could use just about any old TV, perhaps with a UHF-VHF converter and a PAL-decoding mod for SECAM sets. Now that they need a new digital tuner every few years because wireless and video tech is evolving fast and we’re no longer staying behind, they keep complaining.
I lived in Togo for 2 years and I noticed this. My go-to example was music: they skipped records, 8 tracks, cassette tapes, cds, and everyone went straight to having music on their phone.
In second-world countries like mine, we didn’t skip technologies much but avoided format wars and just ended up with the winner:
BetamaxVHSMiniDiscUSB flash storage, SD cardsiTunesYouTube and pirated MP3sHD DVDBlu-ray − just kidding, piracy again for mostGame consolesPC because it’s cheaper to stay up-to-date with hardware and games (not everyone though)If tech moves too fast, people get annoyed. Up until 2008, one could use just about any old TV, perhaps with a UHF-VHF converter and a PAL-decoding mod for SECAM sets. Now that they need a new digital tuner every few years because wireless and video tech is evolving fast and we’re no longer staying behind, they keep complaining.
Similar with banking and mobile internet for much of Africa. Why get a landline when mobile exists. Much of less developed asia, too.
When I was in Benin there was quite a flourishing market in CDs (this was in 2002)