China surpasses US in internet users
May 28th, 2008
There are now more than 220 million Chinese internet users (17 percent of the population), with the US trailing slightly behind at 216 million (71 percent).
The numbers were reported by Beijing-based research group BDA China.
Since the internet’s penetration in China is still relatively low, huge growth is expected.
In the Q1 earnings release, Google said, “Revenues from outside of the United States totalled $2.65 billion, representing over half of total revenues in the first quarter of 2008.
With signs of saturation in the US paid search market, international growth is critical to both Google and its search competitors.
Baidu is China’s most popular search engine by far, with Google only accounting for 15 percent of internet searches. Nonetheless, Google has said it wants to be the search leader in China in five years’ time.
China’s internet consumption hit nearly £30 billion in 2007. This number is predicted to rise by nearly 50 percent this year, according to a survey conducted in Netguide 2008. For this reason, China is a crucial market for US search companies.
This 220 million Chinese are the people of the cities. Their are several studies who say, that this is the actual target group that companies are searching for.