Hirai, who unveiled plans for the service--tentatively called Sony Online Service--on Nov. 19, said he hopes for a release next year. "Earlier in the year would be a lot more preferable," he said, during an interview at Sony headquarters in Tokyo.

Since taking over in mid-2006, Sony's CEO and Chairman Howard Stringer has repeatedly said he wants to create a link between the company's electronic products and digital content such as music from Sony's recording label and TV shows and movies from Sony Pictures Entertainment. What's taken so long? "There was always a vision," Hirai said. But before Stringer appointed a new management team and changed the organization chart in February, the company was riven by too many warring factions, he added.

The new online service online is expected to see a gradual rollout to different Sony products. The company plans to have consumers register for the service the moment they pull a TV or music player out of the box. That would lock them in, much like Apple does with its iTunes Store. If done right, the online store concept could also win a following for the brand.

Hirai said Sony would take the iTunes idea a step further: social networking features. So consumers could use their online accounts to save home videos or photos they shot for friends and family to see. "It's not just access content, stream it, and enjoy," he said. "What are your friends watching right now? There's a screen that says all the programming that's available. It highlights all the things that your friends are watching, for example. It's a community experience."

The hope is that all of the online content available would differentiate Sony's products from competitors. "Take LG or Samsung," he said. "They have some great devices. No services."

The store has huge potential to become a fount of cash. Consider the PlayStation Network. The Web-based gateway for PlayStation 3 video game consoles has been Sony's most successful push into online commerce so far. Launched three years ago, the PlayStation Network has 33 million registered users and sells thousands of downloadable games, TV shows, and movies. It has helped win converts inside the company, Hirai said.

Sony expects the PlayStation Network to bring in $500 million in revenues this fiscal year through March 2010--triple last year's total. Add in the new online service and the hundreds of millions of networked products Sony expects to sell, and the company's revenues from downloads and other paid-for services on the PlayStation Network and the new online service could top $3.3 billion by March 2013, Hirai said.

The new online service will be based on the PlayStation Network. Sony will encourage gamers to sign on to the new service by letting them do so through their PlayStation Network accounts.

Huntsman spoke mostly in English but he is fluent in Mandarin and spent a few minutes speaking in Chinese. It was during the Chinese portion of his speech that Huntsman called Sino-U.S. ties "the world's most important relationship." That recalls the famous description that Mike Mansfield, the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo during the 1980s, gave to Japan's relations with the U.S. Back then, Mansfield liked to say "the U.S.-Japan relationship is the "most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none." Now that honor goes to Japan's giant neighbor. And oddly enough, Mansfield himself, the ultimate booster of Japan-U.S. ties, predicted this would happen. Consider this interview he gave to Japan's Nikkei newspaper ten years ago. Talking about his "bar none" description of ties between Tokyo and Washington, he said "I don’t know how long it’s going to last, though, because you have China on the horizon….China will become more powerful in the decades to come. So far, China has held its head above water better than Japan has and, in doing so, China has become something of a stabilizing factor in East Asia and in the rest of the world….China could be in a position to threaten Japan’s supremacy in Asia. That is the major reason for me to emphasize that it is essential for Japan to rebuild its economy quickly."

Japan didn't change quickly, though. China did. And now it's the U.S. ambassador in Beijing, not Tokyo, who gets to crow about the importance of his job.

Big deal, says one top tech analyst; there’s so much piracy in China, Microsoft barely sells anything in the country to start with. "The majority of operating systems in the market today are illegal copies, and the ones that are Zhongyi-related have an even smaller share of the market," Reuters quoted Edward Yu, chief executive of a China-focused technology research firm Analysys International, saying about the ruling. "So I don't think it will have much impact on Microsoft's business."

Yu's a smart guy whose firm does a lot of good work. Still, though, how do you measure the damage to the company’s brand and image in China as a result of this ruling? Assume, for the sake of argument, that the court is wrong, Microsoft is right and the company did nothing wrong. It still has suffered a big loss, as the court has muddied the waters: Microsoft more than any other American company has been pushing for China to crack down on software piracy, but now the software giant’s many critics can point to this ruling and say look, Microsoft violates IPR itself. Microsoft will appeal, so there’s a chance a higher court will overturn this ruling. In the meantime, though, Microsoft’s now in a weaker position in its endless fight against piracy in China.

Kia, controlled by Hyundai Motor, Korea’s largest carmaker, is confident it can increase its U.S. sales by double digits next year. The Korean company will offer four new models, including the completely redesigned Optima sedan and the Sportage crossover. “We are prepared to expand,” declares Thomas Oh, executive vice president in charge of Kia’s America business. Oh predicts U.S. sales of 350,000 vehicles next year, up from a projected 300,000 this year.

The optimism stems from the Korean carmaker’s outstanding performance this year. In the first 10 months, when the industry’s sales fell 25% in the U.S., Kia sold 261,000 vehicles there, up 7.2% from a year earlier. Company officials say Kia’s U.S. market share, which rose to 2.1% last year from 1.9% in 2007, is poised to top 3% this year for the first time. Taking advantage of its strong lineup of small cars and a weak Korean currency, Kia has managed to win customers from General Motors, Toyota and Honda. With the Korean won still about 19% weaker against the greenback than it was at the beginning of last year, Kia’s expansion story isn’t likely to end for a while.

Now it’s the turn of AUO (itself the product of an earlier round of consolidation) or the Koreans to make a move. Speculation is focusing on Chunghwa Picture Tube, one of the remaining smaller players in the Taiwanese market; according to this report in the China Economic News, “Samsung is eyeing CPT, one of its suppliers, since it can help the Korean firm penetrate the huge Chinese market, taking advantage of its manufacturing facilities in China and its close link with Chinese brands. Korean makers` interest in Taiwan`s TFT LCD firms was underscored by their courtship for Chi Mei, according to the statement of Shi Wen-long, founder of Chi Mei, during the press conference for the acquisition of Chi Mei by Innolux last Saturday.”

It will be especially interesting to see how AUO responds. I was at the company two weeks ago and interviewed C.T. Liu, chief of the company’s consumer display business. (See my recent BW story on Taiwan's tech sector for more.) He emphasized how AUO was trying to get away from relying on huge, capital-intensive factories. “We used to be a heavily invested in TFT-LCD [production]," he told me. “Now AUO is going in a completely different direction." He summed it up with the acronym SELECT, with each letter standing for a different direction: Solar; Energy service; Lighting; E-paper; Cars; and TFT-LCD.

We’ll now have the chance to see how committed AUO is to this new strategy. Will the company sit back and allow Hon Hai to become tops in Taiwan? Or will AUO try to regain its No. 1 position by going after CPt or another smaller rival? And will AUO be willing to allow Samsung to take over a Taiwanese rival and gain a better foothold in China?

My BusinessWeek colleague, Amy Feldman, wrote in this week's issue about a service that will soon be available in the U.S.: emailing money to friends and family.

In Japan, the service has been around since mid-2008. The first was launched by KDDI, the telco that runs au and Japan's second-biggest mobile operator. Its Jibun Ginko (My Bank) service, which started in July 2008, requires that mobile phone subscribers open an account and deposit money, as they would at an ordinary bank.

How common is it to email money from phones? KDDI says 750,000 people have opened accounts so far. But only about 10% are regular users, so it's mostly early adopters who are taking advantage of the service.

Actually, no money is sent from phone to phone. The email message is just a proxy for the transaction, which takes place between banks over a secure network.

The money transfer service is free when it’s between Jibun Ginko account holders. There's also no charge if money is sent to a Mitsubishi UFJ Bank account. For all others, it’s 170 yen ($1.90) if the amount is less than 30,000 yen ($330)--about what you would pay for pulling out cash from a convenience store ATM in Japan--or 270 yen ($3) if the amount is 30,000 yen or more.

How much can you send using your cell phone? 10 million yen, or about $110,000. That's because KDDI’s Jibun Ginko operates as a bank, so the usual money transfer limits apply.

The first storm paralyzed Beijing Capital Airport, with hundreds of flights cancelled, leaving thousands of upset passengers milling throughout the airport, trying to rebook flights, find their checked baggage, or get their fares refunded. I was there for over six hours before giving up on finding a free seat on a flight to Shanghai and returned home. (I ended up flying out the next morning at 8:00 am.) The same scenario was repeated Nov. 12 with the Beijing airport once more in chaos, while others in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, Taiyuan, Shanxi, and Zhengzhou, Henan, were shut outright. Highways again were closed down. “We ordinary people can come with only ordinary suggestions,” wrote one commentator in the China Daily Nov. 13. “It's for the government officials to think and plan about the more intricate and complicated issue. And that is not a tough ask, given the advancement we have made in technology and communications,” the writer continued suggesting that television, Internet and mobile phone messaging, all could have been used to alert people about flight cancellations and warn them from taking to the highways. .

Also controversial: the widespread belief in Beijing that the government bears some responsibility for at least one of the big storms. And this is not just a crazy conspiracy theory either. The capital has a bureau actually called the Beijing Weather Modification Office. This organization gained a fame of sorts for their efforts to control precipitation during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And the weather modification office “played a helping hand and "enhanced" the natural snowfall to ease drought conditions in the city, after it had gone more than 100 days without rain,” a spokesman said, according to the China Daily. Reportedly, 84 packages of silver iodide were fired into the clouds helping bring down the snow during Beijing’s first storm. “I believe it is not a question of improving government efficiency and cooperation among different departments, but a question of respecting the rights of the people. That should always be the basis of any government decision,” the China Daily piece editorialized Nov. 4.

The deal, which includes $38 million in cash, and another $20 million if the privately held, unprofitable McCamish is able to achieve pre-set targets in the next three years, is an acknowledgement that Infosys needs to ramp up its game in the BPO business, which currently contributes less than 1% to its revenues.

Infosys executives have said in the past that they hope to have that contribution reach as much as a fourth of the $5 billion outsourcing giants revenues.

But business process outsourcing requires a different skill set than the nearly 100,000 engineers that Infosys has, who spend most of their days developing software that allows companies in the U.S. to run their billing, inventory and manage systems like data from cell phone networks.

McCamish, for instance, handles some operations for U.S. insurance companies like the Nolan Financial Group and Heritage Union. Infosys will retain the employees at McCamish, but one can expect to see a lot of work-sharing between U.S. and Indian workers at Infosys.

Interestingly, even though Infosys has consistently said it is looking for acquisitions overseas, this is the first move it has made in the past two years to buy anything, despite the fact that it is sitting on around $2 billion of cash, all thrown off by the highly profitable tech service work it does for western clients.

When I met with Infosys executives in June, they had already been thinking about ways to diversify their revenues. Most of its customers had cut back on discretionary spending in 2008, during the recession, and the slowdown in its revenue growth - much of which is from short-term, piecemeal projects - had reminded Infosys leaders that it must step up its hunt for what the industry calls mega-deals, which are signed for 5 or ten year operations and measure in the hundreds of millions of dependable revenue, recession or not.

The BPO world in India is actually pretty scattered, compared to the tech industry, where the majority of work is shared between the three top players - Tata Consultancy, Infosys and Wipro - and a handful of smaller players like HCL. The BPO industry in India has few clear leaders, and none with the size and pull of the IT leaders. So for IT companies, already seeped in the culture of outsourcing technical work, it makes sense to grab a bit of BPO business, especially since foreign companies like CapGemini have done a great job of cornering the high-value deals in back-office work that flows to India.

Perhaps more importantly for Infosys, this acquisition helps show Americans that it is serious about investing in the U.S. and creating jobs there, considering the amount of flak that outsourcing companies have drawn in the past two years as U.S. employment numbers started to plunge.

Well, not exactly, but pretty much.

At the India Economic Summit Nov. 8, one of the many speak-a-thons that mushroom in New Delhi once the weather improves, Singh came out for a little bit of applause, a little bit of politics and little bit of wishful thinking.

The state of the Indian economy? "The worst is behind us."

The future of the Indian economy? "With a normal monsoon next year, we hope to achieve a growth rate of over 7 percent...Our medium term objective continues to achieve a growth rate of 9 per cent per annum."

Eradication of poverty, hunger and disease? " I am happy to say that we have delivered substantially on that promise. But the task is by no means (sic) unfinished." (I think he meant finished )

But there is news in between the platitudes. For instance, India's fiscal stimulus package, which measured anywhere between $50 and $80 billion, depending on how you count it, will be rolled back starting early next year. By most measures though, it was money well spent - government spending kept India's economy afloat when the private sector all but retreated last year. The effort almost broke the bank, though, and as the deficit climbed to 12% of India's $1.2. trillion GDP, it was clear there was no more where that came from.

Speaking of billions of dollars, Singh had just had a tete-a-tete with the Chairman of Wal-Mart's board, S. Robson Walton, and India's Commerce Minister, Anand Sharma, brought up Walton's enthusiasm for India as he totaled up foreign investment (some $35 billion for the twelve months ending March 2010, he estimated). Wal-Mart runs one store in India in a tie-up with Bharti, where it is allowed to sell only to shop-owners, not to customers. But when I visited that store earlier this year, in Amritsar in North India, not far from the Pakistan border, the lines ran out the door, the shoppers ooh-ed and aaah-ed at the prices, and the cash registers, literally, jingled. And even though organized retail is a puny little part of India's $450 billion retail industry, Wal-Mart has been lobbying India's government to open up foreign investment rules so that it can sell directly to customers.

Sharma is the shyer and less boisterous heir to Kamal Nath, who was India's last Commerce Minister, and is now relegated to drumming up foreign and state investment to build roads. It's an interesting study in contrasts - Nath made his name by holding up the last set of the Doha round of talks for a WTO-led global free trade pact, questioning the true intent of western investors. Now he flies around the world asking the same investors, if they will, please, help build a road in rural India.

Sharma, meanwhile, is the new face of Indian trade politics - reticent to speak his mind, even when egged on by reporters - and his appearance this week on the coat-tails of the Prime Minister underscores how closely Singh is monitoring the informal talks that continue non-stop. India's already signed a free trade agreement with South Korea, and with it's neighbors in the ASEAN region. By 2010, it might sign one with the European Union. That's a lot of ink in just a few months on the job.

But Singh speaks so rarely in public (the three public appearances in the last week notwithstanding) that any sense of direction from India's perpetually smiling economist-in-chief is helpful guidance for the over-eager markets, at least. The benchmark 30-stock sensex was up 300 points for the day, almost 2%. Bonds fell, and given the headlines in Monday's newspapers, Singh's stock rose.

That should go some way to assuage concerns that companies planning rivals to the Tata car are wavering. Two Bajaj executives, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told BusinessWeek recently that the company is finding it difficult to persuade suppliers to do the kind of aggressive research and development required to push down prices without a clear guarantee that it would produce a sizable number of cars, especially without an approved final design. Meanwhile, Nissan's executive vice-president for Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, Colin Dodge, told me at last month's Tokyo Motor Show that Nissan's input in the car is now minimal. "The project itself is very difficult," Dodge said. "Doing this car for around $2,500 and getting motorbike drivers to jump into four-wheel vehicles [is] very challenging…[but] the car is coming along."

Ghosn's comments suggest that, despite his leadership in the global push for electric vehicles, there is plenty of life in the project with Bajaj. Still, a few important questions remain. One is how many of the cheap vehicles will be built. In the original press release, Nissan said the car would be built at a plant in Chakan, Maharashtra, with an initial capacity of 400,000. As of October, Tata had only delivered 7,500 Nanos. Another is the price, especially if the Nissan-Renault-Bajaj car is sold outside of India. The Economic Times reports that Ghosn isn't sure if it will retail for $2,500 or $2,800 or $3,000. And, just as important for all involved, can they make any money selling such a cheap car?

The second piece of bad news is really just more of the same: another day of extremely high roadside pollution reported by RTHK radio this morning. A Hong Kong tourism official interviewed on the radio tried to put a brave face on things saying the problem—which he presumably thinks is only temporary-will go away soon. That’s little consolation for anyone visiting Hong Kong at the moment, where the average stay is just a few days. “The blight of air pollution is a tax on the whole tourism industry as it affects tourists during their visit and leaves a negative impression of the city that will affect their desire to return,” says Joanne Ooi, CEO of Clean Air Network, an environmental advocacy group focusing exclusively on air pollution in Hong Kong. “Reduced visibility leads to strong association with less developed cities like Mumbai that leaves a black mark on Hong Kong’s image.”

Equally important perhaps is that Hong Kong’s air quality leads to unfavorable comparisons with its regional rival Singapore which has has long benefited from its reputation as the cleanest and safest metropolis in Southeast Asia. More recently the Singapore government has made a big push to improve the city’s tourism attractions by hosting the Formula One race and allowing casinos to open their doors next year. Another selling point for Singapore: a Universal Studios theme park is also set to open in early 2010. Though smaller than Hong Kong Disneyland, its proximity to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand will give it an advantage over Hong Kong.

But Shanghai is clearly the bigger threat to Hong Kong. Here’s what Parita Chitakasem, research manager at Euromonitor International in Singapore, who specializes in theme parks, had to say to me in an email. “Disneyland Shanghai will have two big features which will make it more attractive than its Hong Kong counterpart: although it is still early days, Disneyland in Shanghai will probably offer a much better experience for your money than Disneyland in Hong Kong – initial plans show that Shanghai’s Disneyland will be six times bigger compared to the current size of Hong Kong Disneyland, which is very small (only 16 attractions). Also, for visitors from mainland China, it will be much easier to travel to Disneyland in Shanghai, as there are no visa/cross border concerns to take care of.”

Still, the Shanghai project is still some years off. Indeed, the press release from Disney was short on details, saying it was in negotiations with the Shanghai government. The Burbank, California-based company will have a 40% stake in the Shanghai resort while the Chinese partners are as yet unnamed. But ff the experience of other U.S. corporations with joint ventures in China is anything to go by, Disney CEO Robert A. Iger is going to need a lot of pixy dust around to make things go smoothly.

Addendum:
Zhongnan University professor Sun Xiliang says on his blog on China.org says Disney needs Shanghai a lot more than Shanghai needs Disney.

Experts say there's no conclusive evidence that blue lights will do any good. "Train operators are desperate to do anything that will bring down the number of suicides," said Tsuneo Suzuki, a professor who specializes in color psychology at Keio University in Tokyo. "But there's no research that proves that blue lights will dissuade people from killing themselves."

Suicides are a common cause of disruption for Japan's railway operators. Last year, Japan recorded 32,249 suicides, a 2.6% fall from the previous year, according to National Police Agency statistics. Of the total, close to 2,000 people, or roughly 6%, had killed themselves by jumping in front of a train. Last year's figures were well below the record high of 34,427 set in 2003. So far this year, amid a recession and unemployment that's hovering near record highs, suicides appear to be on the rise again, with 24,846 reported through September.

On East Japan Railway's lines in Tokyo, suicides rose for the third straight year to 68 in the fiscal year through March--18 of them on the Yamanote line--from 58 the previous year. Company spokesman Koji Takano said the decision to use blue LED lights wasn't based on any researchers' specific findings.

In recent years, cities and railways operators have experimented with colored lights. In one highly publicized case, authorities in Glasgow, Scotland, put up blue lights in parts of the city, and later pointed to anecdotal evidence that crime had fallen. Last year, Japan's Keihin Electric Express Railway set up blue lights inside a station in Yokohama, just west of Tokyo. Other train operators have set up blue lights at railroad crossings.

Recently, officials from Tokyo-based private railway company Tokyu recently paid Keio University's Suzuki a visit to seek his advice about the psychological effect of colored lights. Forget about it, he said, not least because the lights would be switched off during the daylight hours. "I told them that I understood their concerns but that they won't solve a deeply rooted societal problem like suicide by putting up lights," he recalled. "If you showed that it was possible, you would probably win the Nobel Prize."

Given the underwhelming early performance of the iPhone, does RIM need to worry that Chinese will not rush to embrace the BlackBerry? Urban Chinese are some of the savviest cellular consumers around, frequently replacing their handsets, and they want the latest features at the lowest prices. One reason the iPhone isn’t a hit yet for Unicom, for instance, is the popularity of unauthorized iPhones that come loaded with more features than the legit ones offer. RIM won’t have to worry as much about competing with its own phones in the black or gray market, though. Strange as this might sound, RIM probably will find itself in a better position than Apple because the BlackBerry isn't nearly as popular in China as the iPhone.

For close followers of China’s monthly economic indicators, the upgrade should come as no big surprise. China’s Purchasing Managers Index, or PMI, issued by the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing with the support of the National Bureau of Statistics, has been indicating recovery for several months. The latest PMI figures released on November 2, showed that economic expansion is gathering force, showing a figure of 55.2 in October, its highest level since April 2008 when economic growth was nearly red-lining. The index, which reflects manufacturer’s orders, indicated an expansion for the eighth month in a row.

That’s welcome news for China’s neighbors. Their economies have become increasingly tethered to China’s in recent years, supplying the mainland with components and raw materials used as inputs into its monstrous manufacturing industry. Exports from those countries initially plunged along with China’s as U.S. and European consumers went into thrift mode, but the growth in Chinese domestic demand has helped offset that decline somewhat thanks to China's pump priming and a huge turnaround in new residential property construction.

Here’s how the World Bank describes China’s recovery: “Most of the stimulus has shown up in infrastructure-oriented government-led investment. But some has been consumption-oriented and domestic demand growth has been broad based. Resurgent housing sales have started to feed through to construction activity. Investment in manufacturing is affected by spare capacity, but consumption has held up well."

The authors of the report note that one of the big challenges facing the Chinese economy is to achieve more balanced growth. This is a major theme in Stephen Roach's book "The Next Asia" China which I reviewed for BusinessWeek magazine in which Chinese consumers need to save less.

The World Bank East Asia and Pacific Update, which is published twice a year, also painted a brighter picture for Indonesia, which is expected to grow 4.3% this year as against a previous estimate of 3.4%. Estimates of 5.5% growth for Vietnam, and a 2.7% contraction for Thailand remained unchanged.

Singapore’s economy, one of the worst hit in Asia earlier this year by the global downturn, has catapulted its way out of recession, clocking a 14.9% quarter-on-quarter annualized growth in the third quarter. Year-on-year growth was 0.8%, compared with a contraction of 9.6 % and 3.2% in the first and second quarters. For more on this check Bruce Einhorn’s BusinessWeek magazine article “Singapore’s Economy Begins to Stir”.

But that’s not the only thing tipping the scales in favor of home-grown Asian B-schools. Most Asians who study in the U.S. do so with the intention of landing jobs there after graduation, but moves by U.S. lawmakers to restrict the hiring of foreigners on H1-B visas has narrowed their options. “We see strong protectionism that is most disappointing,” says Wilson, as I sneak a forkful of langoustine carpaccio. “There was a free flow of human capital for a long time,” he adds, noting that five of the seven U.S.-based Nobel Prize winners in sciences and medicine were actually born there.

Yet Asia is likely to account for most of the growth in prospective B-school candidates for the U.S. and Europe. That’s why GMAC, which administers the GMAT exams worldwide, is looking to open an office in the region. Indeed, in 2008, 29% of the GMAT test takers were Asian, a 70% growth since 2004. Wilson sees no reason why that number shouldn’t double in the next couple of decades. Meanwhile the number of U.S. test takers has barely budged over that time.

Over the course of lunch we discussed many of the findings from the Geographic Trend Report for GMAT Examinees published by GMAC. For example, test takers from Asia forwarded a lower percentage of their scores to U.S. schools [a strong proxy for applications] than they did in 2004. India saw a 470% increase in the number of score reports received, and Singapore 305%, while Chinese schools saw a 112% increase.

Here’s something else interesting from the report on the gender gap in test taking. [And no doubt one that fans of India vs China debate will want to weigh in on.]The number of women taking the test in from China outnumbered the men two to one. Now that either reflects their believe that China is a meritocracy, or it could mean that women feel they need to arm themselves with more degrees to compete with men in the workforce. [The world average is 39.5% of women among test takers of the GMAT in 2008 vs 60.5% by men.] The ratio was roughly the same for Vietnam and Thailand. For more on gender inequality in the region, have a look at this commentary by Bloomberg's William Pesek.

India, however exhibits almost the complete opposite phenomenon to China. Last year only 25% of the test takers were women, while men accounted for 75%. Even Japan and Korea, countries well known for their glass ceilings had a higher percentage than India. [Only Pakistan ranked lower, with women representing just 20% of test takers. I’m at a loss to explain this gender breakdown and hope you readers will offer your theories.

Region-wide, the Indian School of Business Post Graduate Programme in Management received more score reports from test takers than MBA programs at Harvard, U. Penn and Columbia. More tellingly perhaps is the country breakdown. From Singapore, more test scores were sent to local schools than U.S. schools. However Chinese candidates clearly prefer the U.S. education option, with 77% of scores sent to schools there. A mere 2% of scores were sent to Chinese MBA programs.

When Wilson and I weren’t reminiscing about our alma maters [we both went to Queen’s University in Canada and did graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley] and how in our day all you needed to do was sharpen your Number 2 pencils and limit your alcohol consumption on the eve of taking the GMAT, we puzzled over some of the more arcane data in the report. For example, more Nepalese took the GMAT in 2008 than did Malaysians. Neither of us could come up with much of an theory on that. Or why did so many Vietnamese test takers send their score reports to the University of Houston? It ranked number one, while Harvard was number nine among their choice. It sure seems like the admissions folks down in Clear Lake are making a big push to recruit Vietnamese.

One answered question in the report is why so few U.S. B-school hopefuls send their scores to our side of the pond over here in Asia.