It turned out that the Chinese were using their phones differently than almost anyone in the West, using voice as the main interface, letting speech recognition programs do their texting instead of tapping out things themselves. Partly, this was simply easier, because of the cumbersome nature of tapping out Chinese characters on a smartphone. But the more interesting fact was that they weren’t just chatting with humans. They were using chat as their entry point into the digital world; rather than tapping through menus to find the right app, they were using their voice.
