Personally, I can think of no faster path to a worldwide recession than for the twin engines of the global economy - the United States and China - to turn against one another.

There has been no global improvement on average. The average quality of governance worldwide has remained stagnant.

There's a lot of protectionist sentiment out there, a lot of anti-China sentiment, which I think is unfortunate, and I think if we were to pass some of the less thoughtful legislation that's floating around in Washington, precipitating a trade conflict between the US and China, that's about the fastest way I can imagine to get to global recession.

We got into a recession because the global economy went into the recession and we're a big exporting nation.

The changes in these and other engine parameters are then consistent with both engines shutting down,

Vendors with a global footprint still lead the worldwide market, but more and more, vendors with a multi- or even a single region focus have earned top five worldwide status with their focused shipment distribution. The departure of other worldwide vendors has opened the door for smaller vendors to improve their position within the market. During the course of the year, several smaller vendors remained within striking distance of beating each other for the number four or five position, and even posed a challenge to some of the worldwide vendors.