The latest statistical figures released by the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center reveals that China is due to surpass the United States as the nation with the most Internet users, some time this year.
The figure reported by the Chinese government institution was a 53 percent jump from 137 million Chinese Internet users reported at this time last year. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: China says number of Internet users rises to 210 million, could overtake US this year
- “Currently China’s online population is about 50 million less than that of the United States and is the world’s second-largest,” the agency, also known as CNNIC, said on its Web site. “CNNIC forecasts that (China) will become the largest online country in 2008,” it said.
- The U.S. Census Bureau said last year that about 218 million of the country’s 310 million people used the Internet.
- China promotes Internet use for education and business but tries to block the public from seeing material deemed pornographic or that opposes communist rule.
This latest figure only consolidates the fact that China is a very ripe market for web hosting. With a population of 1,323,128,240 [over 1.3 billion], China currently ranks as the most populous country in the world with the USA coming 3rd after India. China’s current population is 19.83% of the world’s total population whilst that of the USA is 4.55%. Economists are predicting that China and India would be the world’s next super-powers in as soon as ten years time, going by the strong annual economic growth the two countries have been marking over the years.
Having realised all the above-stated points, many of the leading dot-com companies have opened shop in China to reap from the economic windfall: Google, Paypal, ebay, Microsoft, Yahoo etc
Now, China is not exactly a virgin market if the figures by WebHosting.info are anything to go by. Chinese web hosts share 2,735,314 domains amongst themselves whilst Chinese ICANN-accredited registrars have registered 3,275,345 generic domain names.
China stands at 5th position; followed by US, Germany, UK, Canada on country-wise highest number of registered domains. Six out of top ten countries are from non-english speaking regions and for most of global web hosting companies / control panels, it leave them with little chances in domestic penetration unless they localize their services/product or partner with some regional distributor.
The point is simple: web hosting firms in other parts of the world that can target a section of their marketing website at the Chinese population stand to reap economic benefits from China’s fast-growing Internet population. A website with a Chinese language version would be a first step though its important to point that many educated Chinese individuals can handle the English language fairly well.
Note: Major source taken from David's blog in WebHostingSearch.
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