China is growing in importance in the tech industry. The Chinese have been dominant for years in regard to manufacturing, and we’ve discussed their monopoly on certain vital elements for electronics production before. Now, they are becoming increasingly more dominant as a purchasing power of technology.

It’s recently come to light that China is now accounting for 15% of Apple’s revenue. That is an increase of 3% in the last fiscal year. More impressively, it’s an increase of 13% since 2009. In this past quarter, China brought in $5.7 billion for Apple. If this trend continues, it won’t be long at all until China is on par with the US in terms of revenue generated for Apple.

In the English-speaking Western world, it is all too easy to think almost exclusively about sales and market share in Europe and North America. Clearly, the Chinese cannot be ignored anymore. They aren’t just some country of little consequence where our computers and phones are made. They are becoming a financial force to be reckoned with, and the Apples and Samsungs of the world aren’t stupid. China is looking more and more dominant by the day.

As phone and computer saturation reaches its pinnacle in North America and Europe, those markets just aren’t as interesting to an industry addicted to ever-increasing growth. Countries like China, India, and Brazil are going to be the new golden children of the tech world. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes the driving force of the majority of tech companies.

What does this mean for the industry? Besides the ego-blow to the long-dominant Western countries, it also means that tech companies are going to start prioritizing the needs and desires of the Chinese people. Design, engineering, and business could all be drastically shifted with developing and recently-developed countries in mind. When products are being developed, it would be very short-sighted for companies not to consider heavily how well they will play to Chinese consumers.

Most importantly, we need to keep in mind that the current way of doing business just might not scale. If demand grows in size three or four times in a relatively short period of time, supply constraints will become a real issue. The pre-order allotment of iPad Minis sold out in the first twenty-or-so minutes. Think about a world where we have two-to-three billion more consumers of iPads, laptops, and phones. It might be months before everyone who wants a new product can purchase it. It’s a real problem, and we can’t ignore it any longer.

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[Image credit: chinnian]