Geographic Network Effect and Global Politics

Just because a product wins in one market doesn’t mean they win globally. If other players are able to get exponential growth working for them in specific geographies they can dominate those spheres before the global player enters the market.

For example Baidu the search engine giant in China was able to outcompete Google. How did it happen? Depends on who you talk to - but my analysis is that it was because the Chinese government decided to protect their market to allow Baidu to get the momentum in this market and become dominant.

When you look at markets from this lens it gives another way to look at the 5G market with Huawei - the US by discouraging all it’s partners from using Huawei it reversing the network effect that Huawei was achieving in the global 5G market.