←back to thread

1192 points gniting | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.402s | source
Show context
solardev ◴[] No.43520222[source]
Privacy issues aside, it's kinda cool reading about how Indians use their phones, and also how they use English. I'd never heard "beyond the pale" before, and I'm still not sure what the idea of "multiple Indias" means when some of them are Mexico and some are Africa...?

I've also never heard of the majority of the apps being analyzed or tracked. Must be such a different world out there.

replies(4): >>43520275 #>>43520591 #>>43533349 #>>43536750 #
milesrout ◴[] No.43520591[source]
Beyond the pale is commonly used in English. A pale is a stake, and it means beyond the boundary (set out by a fence with stakes, hence the phrase) of what is acceptable. It gaines popularity in the mid 19th century. It may be related to the term "the Pale" which referred to the better controlled more Anglicised part of Ireland around Dublin, but there isn't enough evidence to be sure of this. Certainly not an Indianism anyway.

>I'm still not sure what the idea of "multiple Indias" means when some of them are Mexico and some are Africa...?

Is it not pretty obvious? It is like the phrase "middle America". It doesn't literally mean a different country. It means different wealth categories: the Indians that when considered as a whole are economically equivalent roughly to Mexico, those roughly equivalent to Indonesia (poorer) and those roughly equivalent to Sub-Saharan Africa (poorest). There are ~1b Indians that are still so poor they aren't realistically in the market for your startup app if it wants its customers to ever spend anything, there are ~300m Indians that could be in the market for some apps, but probably mostly free ad-funded ones, and there are ~150m Indians that are quite a good market because they will happily spend money on something that provides value.

I got all this just from reading the post btw.

replies(2): >>43520768 #>>43524081 #
1. solardev ◴[] No.43520768[source]
Makes sense, thanks! I love reading about how other cultures do software.