Would the meaning of the term 'the tipping point' be recognised and
understood globally by intelligent people?

Globally?  I'm a college-educated American and I'm not even exactly
sure what that means.  Is it sort of like "the straw that broke the
camel's back"?

Yes, it's like 'the straw that broke the camel's back', or 'the point
of no return', or even 'the icing on the cake'. It was the title of a
book by a US writer called Malcolm Gladwell about how ideas slowly
catch on and then get a life of their own. The book became a
semi-bestseller here in the UK and the phrase is now starting to pop
up in the mainstream media. I was wondering whether the same was
happening to it in other parts of Europe and the rest of the world (in
the local language, of course).

Thanks for responding to this, my first ever question on Google answers!

Globally not... I'm from other side of Earth - not understandig )))

Surely the concept can't be that difficult to grasp. If I slowly push
a bottle of water from the upright position onto its side, there will
be a point at which I no longer have to exert pressure as gravity will
take over. The bottle will have reached its 'tipping point'. In the
same way, I could be looking to buy a Sony or a Panasonic TV, for
instance. They both cost the same, look the same, have the same
features and so on. But then the makers of the Sony offer me a free
DVD player as well. That will make my mind up for me. It will tip me
over the edge, and I'll go ahead and buy the Sony. The same idea works
collectively, too. The iPod could have become just another niche
product, but at some stage sufficient numbers of people - the right
sort of people - adopted the iPod and it reached 'the tipping point'.

I'd have thought that every language has a phrase that expresses this
idea. Perhaps I'm wrong.

sorry to tell you that i don't think that it is known in egypt but may
be if u mean by intelligent people they might know it !!
i am not that exact sure , but i checked the dictionary to know what
does it refer to !!

The concept is not difficult to grasp, but the phrase requires explanation.