Internet Penetration in India : Hot or Not?
Comscore has released an interesting report called ‘World of Search’ and here are a few findings:
- Total of 69 billion searches occured in October 2007, conducted by 775 million unique searchers.
- US alone was responsible for 21% of the search query, followed by China (9.5% ).
- India doesn’t figure in the top 8 countries.
Details (via TC) :
- In 1996,67% of all people online lived in the U.S. By last October, that had completely flipped, with 77 % of the online population living in the rest of the world and only 23 percent in the U.S. – i.e. epicenter of www is shifting away from US.
- Homegrown Market – Leading websites in big markets such as Russia, Japan, and South Korea tend to be homegrown as well.
India has no story to share here. - UU – i.e. unique user story:
- US stands at 162 million.
- China ~96 million
- India at 8th position, @ 25.2 million users.
- Top Email Service is of course, Y! Mail with 262.2 million unique visitors in oct, 2007, closely followed by Hotmail (256.4mn). Gmail secures 3rd position with 87.1 mn unique visitors.
On the face of it, India story (i.e. 8th position worldwide) doesn’t look that bad – but it’s surely bad if you look at the real numbers, given the Internet penetration w.r.t country’s population (China is doing far better than India and the core emerging markets are well placed than India).
Infact, the bottom 6 countries’ Internet penetration summed together is almost equivalent to the figures from top 2 country (i.e. US + China) – Classic case of Digital divide?
What’s your opinion?
-
Related posts:
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
[...] surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), ranks 8th of this list. As pointed out by Ashish on pluGGd.in, India’s position doesn’t seem too shabby, unless, of course, you account for its user [...]
Well from these figures I can smell huge opportinty in India !!!
Low postion for India means greater growth potential in almost all areas.I wont be surprise if all internet companies change focus to India in next two-three years.
As far as numbers are concern I am not very surprised with Indian figures though China ’s figure fasinate me for couple of reasons like how come ina authoritative country with non-engilsh lanaguage can do so well and what could we learn from that.
With falling ARPU telecom companies will have to chnage foucs to braodband.Falling computer prices and stress on e-governance by states will give a huge bust to PC and broadband penetration.
Expecting next google from India ? .YES.
India has quantity.. but where is the stats that shows how India stands interms of quality by that I mean speed and price ?
in the speedtest.net stats. India is nowhere to be seen
I am not surprised with the Indian results.
The massive Indian population don’t account for anything if most of them live in villages and a lot them still don’t have proper electricity and phone communication. Even affluent and well-to-do people who don’t live in cities have absolutely no idea what the internet is.. and even look at computers with suspicion. This has been my personal experience as my hometown is in a rural area.
We will have a very far way to go.
Sorry for second comment:
The situation in the cities isn’t too great either. I am sure most of the lower-middle class people don’t use the internet, though I don’t have any statistics to back it up.
And then, like another visitor commented, we don’t have good quality internet access too.
Now that comes back to a basic qn – why use Internet? What’s in for say, a middle class person working in a state bank?
Do we have services that fulfill any need?
Apart from dating, socionet, – what’s in for a “regular” person?
What do you think?
Well Ashish this regular person in Indian internet context is educated , english speaking guy/gal who feel understand the term “internet”.
Internet is about information,communication and entertainment.Middle class person working in a state bank can do laundry list of his banking tasks comfortably sitting at home.He can send and receive money on click of a button,invest in stock market, communicate and consult with buddies on IM , read reviews of experts.
I dont see we lack in services. Email is milion time better then Indian postal services. Just remember the experience of internet banking and banking in queues in SBI.
To me most of theese “regular persons” lack in experience of internet.One reason for this is that cost of internet experience” is high ( english educated, knowledge of computer, affordability of internet serives etc). With falling cost of this experience we will see many more trying and loving this experience.
For those who already in love with internet quality is a big problem.
Satpal
@Satpal – I understand what you are saying. But the basic qn I am trying to raise is what is the effectiveness of current web services in India? At what point in time do they touch a typical end user? – Except for job sites and matrimonial services, usage and results are fairly minimal.
Point that I am trying to make is that web services in India are still busy catching the low hanging fruit…a typical Indian (given the population) need more than email, IM, SocioNet services.
On the face of it, India story (i.e. 8th position worldwide) doesn’t look that bad – but it’s surely bad if you look at the real numbers, given the Internet penetration w.r.t country’s population (China is doing far better than India and the core emerging markets are well placed than India).
[...] unsupported data published in a forum about internet penetration and usage pattern in India; the Comscore report is also worth looking at. All these point to the fact that the digital phenomena in India is still [...]