China has 338 Million internet users !!

The state-run China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said that its Internet statistics show that Internet users in China are up by an estimated 40 million from the end of last year. The internet user base has reached reaching 338 million users by June 2009 and the country has achieved a density of 25.5 percent, which is above the global average of 23.8 percent. By the end of June, there were 3,061 million websites registered in China, 16.25 million domain names and 205 million IP addresses.

In China, internet service providers include companies like Baidu, Alibaba group and Tencent.
Many of these Internet service companies have carved out niches using their market knowledge to satisfy consumer demand for music, news, instant messaging and search functions with the other four popular services being in way of online gaming, videos, email and blogging. As reported in Telecommunications online, Tencent Holdings achieved a total revenue of CNY 5.38 billion (US$787.9 million), an increase of 77.5 percent increase over the same period last year. It had a cash position of CNY 7.7 billion (US$1.1 billion) at the end of first half 2009. Noted for its instant messaging service, it reportedly has 990 million user accounts of which 448 million are active.

Also reporting positive results is China’s leading Internet search provider, Baidu, which attained a turnover of CNY 1.1 billion (US$161 million) for its second quarter in 2009, representing a 36.7 percent increase year-on-year. As for the online auction provider Taobao, the country’s equivalent of eBay, it had a favourable first half year of 2009 recording revenue of CNY 80.9 billion (US$11.8 billion) and it reportedly has set a target of CNY 200 billion (US$29 billion) for the whole year. Taobao is part of the Alibab group which also has interests in online payment and business-to-business platforms in 240 countries.

According to the CNNIC, the number of Chinese shopping online grew in the first six months with 14 million more shoppers to reach a total of 87.8 million. Online shoppers, however, only account for a quarter of Chinese Internet users, compared to two out of three in South Korea, the United States and Europe. Security risks of shopping on the Net may be one withholding factor.

I presume the things will not be much different in India

BRICI countries to have 1.2 billion Internet users by 2015 - BCG

According to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Internet users in BRICI countries will nearly double by 2015, hitting around 1.2 billion users. In 2009, the BRICI countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Indonesia - had some 610 million Internet users.

 Although there are only 440 million PCs in the BRICI countries at present, this number should more than double by 2015 - and Internet cafés and mobile devices will also act as important means of digital access. The study says that the habits exhibited in the BRICI countries differ markedly from those in the developed markets - for instance, instant messaging is vastly more popular, as are online music and games. There are remarkable variations among the BRICI countries as well. Social networking is more popular in Indonesia and Brazil than in any of the other BRICI countries - or even in the developed markets. And while an extremely high percentage of Indian digital consumers use e-mail, Chinese Internet users have gravitated toward instant messaging.

Among the most prominent trends is that BRICI digital consumers are far more likely to be meeting their digital needs through mobile phones than through personal computers. With PC penetration still quite low, mobile phones are cheaper and more convenient tools for both communicating and seeking out entertainment - already, the BRICI countries have around 1.8 billion mobile-phone SIM card subscriptions, more than four times the combined total of those in the United States and Japan. In fact, as sophisticated handsets become available in the BRICI markets, millions of BRICI digital consumers are leapfrogging over PC usage and going online via their mobile phones, a trend that has significant implications for their Internet-usage habits.

In addition, BRICI Internet users are unusually young - more than 60 percent of digital consumers are under the age of 35 - which means that although the online habits of BRICI consumers are still being formed, these behavior patterns will have broad implications for future online activity.