Not an easy thing to conceptualize indeed, but according to eMarketer there will be more mobile Internet users in China than the entire population of the US by the end of this year.
For your reference, the 2010 estimate of the size of the United States population stands at roughly 310 million people according to Wikipedia, so that’s a whole lot of people browsing the Web from their phones right there.
The report, which you can purchase here, also says the number of mobile Internet users in China will grow fast to reach a staggering 957 million, and that the country will count approximately 1.3 billion mobile subscribers by 2014.
eMarketer points out that those mobile Internet users do not currently monetize as well as smaller mobile audiences in, say, the States, which means that mobile advertising spending levels in China are still low relative to the size of the mobile Web user base. Also, the company highlights another key trend in China, which is that mobile subscriber growth is actually slowing while mobile Internet user growth is accelerating.
More in this blog post (via Twitter).
(Photo credit: Flickr / lime*monkey / CC BY 2.0)
Awesome :), this is cool and pretty excited to see what will happen when people have on the fly connectivity :)
Awesome, soon we our world will be filled by more competitive hackers, and this is a great news right?
Is China Really Evil?
This is interesting. This only happens because our economy is draining and our improvement is lacking.
Don’t be dumb. It says there will be more USERS in China than there are PEOPLE here. A crappy economy isn’t changing our population that much.
INteresting trend,
china ……… a must visit nation lol.
Just too bad they don’t have an access to the not-censored-internet there.
Same with Australia, France, and Germany. Also the US if they can have it their way.
That’s why it’s ridiculous of Google to try to make us believe that they really consider quitting the Chinese market.
Based on population in China, it is not surprising to see this coming soon. Mobile apps future is in Asia.
I find this numbers highly suspect. 1.3 billion mobile subsribers by 2014? That means, keeping with current population growth in China, a 95% entry to mobile phones. That’s impossible, really. Every villager? Every eldery over 80?
Over 20% of china’s population is under the age of 14. Even if every kid over 8 will get a phone, that’s STILL less then 95%. Not to mention I cant’ imagine every family in china could afford phones for all, especially in poor, rural china.
Chinese consumers are taking cell phone as a fashion product, not only a communication tool. People are very likely to be affected by others who have a fancy cell phone. The number there maybe over optimistic, but the trend is imperative.
Indeed,
the quality of these numbers seems quite poor and so do the comments. Come on people, be critical and don’t talk non-sense.
It is not uncommon for people to have multiple cell phones — one for work, one for personal use. That’s part of the reason why Hong Kong, a region in China with about 7 million people, has a mobile subscriber penetration of 120%, more cell phone numbers than there are people.
the 957 million subscribers is the TOTAL mobile penetration and NOT mobile Internet penetration, right? i think this post mixes up this very important distinction.
Exactly. Thats the total number of mobile subscribers. It’ll take some time (yrs) for either china or indian mobile internet users to beat US users (leave alone US population)
China already has 233 million mobile internet users.
When I visited China last month there was a cell phone store about every fifth shop.
In the spirit of Harel Eilam’s comment, I’ll assume you visited a CITY China, not RURAL China.
Really its Awesome , this is cool and pretty excited to see what will happen when people have on the fly connectivity
Not to nitpick, but I’d hardly call them Web users when they essentially have access to an enclosed network. That’s like saying my company has 7000 “web users” because we use the same Exchange server.
Investing into Mobile Advertising in China might set you up for an overnight success. I understand government restrictions, but seems as no one has really tried yet.
To offset the stats back to what this article is saying; 28% of Chinese own two or more mobile devices…
The smartphone is the computer. There is no edge to the network — it is everywhere.
As these 1 billion Chinese mobile phone users transform (in a few years) to smartphone users, that will be 1 billion people with the equivalent access and connectivity and opportunity as all Americans. In such a world, we need to rethink every policy. For example, maybe offer free mobile broadband and free smartphones to every child. Give everyone in school a free iPad? Give every high school kid a $1,000 to start his own business.
But let’s also take a moment to realize how billions of people on the planet will soon be connected (with each other) via the mobile web. I suspect it will transform us in ways equivalent as going from farming to manufacturing.
LOL you have to be joking. Are you seriously saying that even with everyone “connected” that the quality of life and opportunities in China will be ANYWHERE near elsewhere? You have hundreds of millions of people who can barely read and farm the land while waiting to be relocated by the regime. You have a government which openly states that its people are too “immature as a society” to be able to handle access to information in any free form. Give me a break.
> You have hundreds of
> millions of people
> who can barely read
Actually why don’t you give us a break?
China has a 93% adult literacy rate.
The fact that you don’t know this makes me suspect you don’t really know anything about China.
This isn’t that surprising if you simply know the population of China.
Most of mobile internet users in China are using normal cell phone, rather than something like iphone, Android or blackberry. The most important application for Chinese Mobile Internet user is QQ, a instant messenger from Tencent. According to announcement from Tencent, QQ
has 1 billion users all over the world.
china,..oh china,..di bigget and i hope it will be the leader soon as possible,..
On the back of strong pent-up demand, mobile Internet services present tremendous commercial opportunities for mobile service providers, while challenging the technical and commercial underpinnings of their traditional operations. Service providers are pursuing the mobile Internet opportunity primarily with connectivity-centric approaches that focus on the migration to advanced IP-based radio networks. http://electronics.wesrch.com/pdfEL1WSSSO0EENU
This is a stupid article. The Chinese have also more shoes than the Americans. Does this mean that, as a country, they are “superior” to the US and that they are about to dominate the world? This is BS.
The question really is, unlike developed country users who use the web in a more powerful and useful way, Chinese and Indian mobile users are still nascent web users in the that monetization opposite aren’t at western levels yet. Per capital, advertising dollars still have more value in the west though bottom of the pyramid seems to be the tune of all businesses entering the BRIC countries…
Sunil, it seems to you that anything outside the US is a threat. Poor you.
Oh, give me a break. 1.3 billion? Thats the whole population (according to wikipedia) Thats not really possible. Old people on rual china chatting on the net? I think it just a advertising scam from a lying internet firm and not real.
Buhhu for such a nonsens article. BTW in Gemany many people have multiple phones or contracts (most are laying still without payment but will be count on statistics, i’ve got 5-6)
You know, many people own more than one cell phone. There are actually countries where there are more mobile subscribers than people. If you’d read the comments or used google before saying something you’d know that.
i am like to
China has had 233 million of mobile Internet users by the end of December 2009, accounting for 60.8 percent of China’s Internet population.
http://goo.gl/DuqQ
China has had 233 million mobile Internet users by the end of December 2009, accounting for 60.8 percent of China’s Internet population.
http://goo.gl/DuqQ