We do suffer from an ethno-centric view of this technology. The primary reason for its success is that it perfectly fills the latent demand for net access over their very limited and extermely expensive physical infrastructure. While we here in the U.S. have plenty of wired infrastructure, even IF we just can't get broadband out fast enough. Add on to that our problems with standardizing on a packet-based wireless protocol to which there is no foreseeable resolution and your hesitation starts to become a little more understandable. What these companies are doing is targeting the markets of tomorrow.
Kids are already addicted to games.
Lookit how much time, energy, and money was poured into pokemon as a single player computer game. Now apply that same fervor into a game which allows the players to reach out and interact with those around them. So what's at the heart of this move is to so engrain the use of the technology so as to use it more and more as a universal device that provides all of your information and entertainment needs. Everywhere you go, you will want and expect to find infrastructure which supports and empowers that life-style. People will come to expect it in everything with which they interact.