India has fourth largest internet users in the world!
July 6th, 2007 , by amitagwlIt came to be as a surprise. India is the fifth largest internet users country in the whole world!
This is truly astonishing. We are a force to reckon with. The number of unique Internet users 15 years or older rose 33 percent in India to 21.1 million. This is a report by comScore networks. Now what I will be really interested in is the business model to capitalize on this big user base. We need to come up with solid monetization models for these users. Everyone is talking about mobile as the number one platform for India. I do not deny it. The country added 6.57 million mobile subscribers in May this year, taking the total number of subscribers to 178 million, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in Delhi. The country added 6.11 million new mobile subscribers in April. India has additional 40 million fixed phone line users. Of course more than half of them will have cell phones as well. Hence the overall phone users might be around 200 million. The Indian government is targeting 500 million telephones, both fixed and wireless, by 2010. In spite of this, 40 million internet users make up for a significant monetizable user base. I still think the form factor (mobile screen size) is a problem to monetize all these phone users. Where as, PC is a proven and developed platform for monetization. We just need to figure out what works in India and develop business models around them.
Some more links:
July 9th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Despite that, it seems that the actual penetration is low. Just read this story on contentsutra: http://www.contentsutra.com/entry/419-indias-internet-penetration-lowest-in-asia-pacific-region/
(Not to say that it stops web companies from selling to 41 million people)