Here’s a sample of our current obsessions:

• The mobile web: By May 2012 a tenth of the world’s web traffic was on mobile phones—and it’s the so-called “developing” world that is leading the charge.  How will this disrupt existing internet giants? Who are the rising stars in emerging markets?  How is the shift to mobile affecting the internet’s design and business models?  And how will the next billion people get online?
• China slowdown: China’s economic growth seems to be decelerating from its eye-popping highs, just as the country is going through its once-a-decade leadership transition. How will the new leadership set economic policy in the light of rivalry between political clans? How will it adjust to social unrest? And what effects is the slowdown having on industries and countries around the world that have come to depend on Chinese demand?
• The next crisis: What are the new sources of financial instability and imprudent investment? Where is regulation still weak? And who stands to gain from the flaws still inherent in the global financial system?
• The Euro crunch: Rather than tracking every detail, we provide a simple guide to the level of threat facing European unity. And in parallel we focus on two questions: who is winning and losing in Europe’s turmoil, and what are the methods that people and companies are using to adjust, cope with, and even profit from it?
• The consumer class: As consumer spending reaches new highs and moves online and into emerging economies, how will consumer tastes evolve across borders?  What sorts of companies and products will meet these changing demands?  How will spending shape global trade and economics, and what are the political implications of more disposable income and time?

Quartz was built with the tablet as the primary design interface, then was optimized for mobile and desktop—this is a sharp departure from the traditional approach that focuses on desktop and retrofits for other devices afterward.  The radically simplified design structure of the site and native-app-like performance ambitions are the product of Quartz’s tablet- and mobile-first approach. Quartz’s navigation, content, and advertising are meant to be touched. The article headlines and the well of content and advertising scroll effortlessly as users are accustomed on mobile and tablet devices. Editors tailor charts and animations on the site to work well on mobile. Quartz’s free web application approach has helped turbocharge users’ sharing of content via social media—there’s no paywall or different article url for mobile or app store download required. About one-third of Quartz’s readers come to it from mobile and tablet devices. Josh Benton of Nieman Lab hailed Quartz as a “technological and structural innovator” and the site was a finalist for Adweek’s Hotlist Tablet Publisher/Aggregator category, validating Quartz’s embrace of the post-desktop era.