When I saw the post on the fp of HN, my first reaction was "hey wait I know that name... ohh..ooohhh". (Disclaimer: Ghanaian here. Currently an SE in the US )

I think a culture shift in the IT community will definitely make the message loud, but the truth is that this dump comes from businesses who deal primarily with the average consumer, not the tech-savvy minority. And until the majority cares, nothing is going to change unfortunately. Every step in that direction helps though, by all means, we as a community need to be much more vocal about this (well, be concerned first of all)

"Early adopters" are a much smaller segment of the market, true, but they also buy a ton more stuff than regular people by definition. :)

Without seeing numbers, I would highly doubt that premise. Sure, the maybe a couple hundred thousand geeks will buy a few more laptops and phones, but the couple hundred million consumers will surely win by volume, no? (Strictly speaking US here)