Not a good week for incumbents

First the good news. IEEE forecasts that data usage will grow 10 times today's volume in a mere three years, and will expand a whopping 100 times by 2020. This will be driven by almost two billion new heavily online people in Asia, half a billion more from Middle East and Africa. Altogether it means adding 15 billion new devices.

This is good news for device makers, communication companies. It is also going to be good for anyone delivering products via the cloud, social, mobile and analytics (big data). If you are in Asia, then you can count yourself as the lucky(er) ones.

Now for the bad news. Between now and 2015 is going to be one of the roughest rides since world war two. For starters, South East Asia despite emerging as a significant market, runs the risk of becoming a military hotspot. China seems to be eager to try to divide ASEAN via the South China Sea. Russian and American governments have also recently increased their focus, resources (arms) in our part of the world. This is also in addition to previous announcements by the Indians who will also increase patrols here.

Secondly, there is a growing number of economists who opine that the world is in a depression. Although there aren't any people jumping from the top of the Empire state building, all the major economies have all the symptoms: crippling sovereign debt, financial crisis, declining economy and chronically high unemployment. Al Lewis from Dow Jones, shares that one out of seven Americans are living on food stamps. This is around 45 million, roughly the same population as Spain.

Thirdly, the USA federal reserve, the European Union and the Chinese government have increased prospects of their respective stimulus to DEFCON 3. Expect cheap money to flood soon. That means prices will go up for us folks in Asia. Any incumbent trying to get re-elected in the next couple of years is going to have a challenge staying in power.

People want to get rid of the old and bring in the new. The new has to be visibly cheaper, better and faster. Take for example the Ouya game console under development. When it is built, it will probably not reach standards of PCs and any of the major consoles. But it will be so cheap that people will use it, then upgrade it when a better version releases, just like android based phones. And yes, Ouya will run on the android operating system.

It wasn't long ago that e-commerce companies like Amazon and e-Bay were the vanguard, but they are quickly becoming incumbents. Governments around the world are now starting to put together laws to tax their transactions. This includes the U.S. Senate, who is starting a debate to instate sales tax for online transactions.

Even weapons companies are starting to lose their grip. A few days ago, a chap codenamed "Have Blue" printed an assault rifle using his 3D printer, then used it to shoot 22 calibre bullets. It is a good time to put your head down, roll up your sleeves and do something new and meaningful, even if it only makes a small difference. Because the times are a-changing.