Here are a few charts I put together when researching the reasons for eBay's failure in China. It shows the total number of internet users in China and the United States.
As we can see, China accelerated past the United States from about 2006 onward. By 2008, China had comfortably overtaken the U.S. with 299 million users, compared with 225 million in the America.
These days, China has comfortably more than double the number of internet users than there are in the U.S. It has 571 million internet users, whereas the U.S. has 254 million users.
But the raw count of internet users only tells half the story. Or should I say 42 per cent of the story. The other factor is the penetration rate i.e. the percentage of the population that use the internet.
The chart above shows the total population of both China and the United States. The darker colours represent the number of internet users and the lighter colours represent the non-internet using population.
Only 42 per cent of people in China were internet users in 2012. However this is a staggering rise considering that less than 2 per cent of the population were internet users in 2000. The amount of headroom remaining for growth is phenomenal. No wonder so many Western companies want a piece of this big, tasty steamed pork bun.
Having been to China a few times I can personally vouch for the ubiquity of the internet and associated technologies such as smartphones. Certainly in the larger cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
However, I have also experienced the Great Firewall of China at first hand. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are inaccessible in China. Local alternatives, such as Sina Weibo, with over half a billion registered users, have cropped up as a consequence.
So, the most popular non-Chinese sites are blocked in the country. The Chinese language makes Chinese sites essentially inaccessible for outsiders. Yet, as we can see above, almost a quarter of the world's internet users are in China. And that percentage is growing fast. Where exactly is the true internet again?
Chinese keywords: 互联网用户数, 中国, 美国
Sources: International Telecommunications Union for internet penetration figures and the World Bank for populations.
As we can see, China accelerated past the United States from about 2006 onward. By 2008, China had comfortably overtaken the U.S. with 299 million users, compared with 225 million in the America.
These days, China has comfortably more than double the number of internet users than there are in the U.S. It has 571 million internet users, whereas the U.S. has 254 million users.
But the raw count of internet users only tells half the story. Or should I say 42 per cent of the story. The other factor is the penetration rate i.e. the percentage of the population that use the internet.
Only 42 per cent of people in China were internet users in 2012. However this is a staggering rise considering that less than 2 per cent of the population were internet users in 2000. The amount of headroom remaining for growth is phenomenal. No wonder so many Western companies want a piece of this big, tasty steamed pork bun.
Having been to China a few times I can personally vouch for the ubiquity of the internet and associated technologies such as smartphones. Certainly in the larger cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
However, I have also experienced the Great Firewall of China at first hand. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are inaccessible in China. Local alternatives, such as Sina Weibo, with over half a billion registered users, have cropped up as a consequence.
So, the most popular non-Chinese sites are blocked in the country. The Chinese language makes Chinese sites essentially inaccessible for outsiders. Yet, as we can see above, almost a quarter of the world's internet users are in China. And that percentage is growing fast. Where exactly is the true internet again?
Chinese keywords: 互联网用户数, 中国, 美国
Sources: International Telecommunications Union for internet penetration figures and the World Bank for populations.
