Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers recently published their annual Internet Trends update.
It’s a thought provoking document that is packed with data, and it also highlights how the internet is influencing people, products and services.
One chart that caught my eye included the statistics on the number of internet users and market penetration by country, shown below.
- The US is second in the number of internet users, with 244 million, which represents 78% penetration of the population.
- China leads the way with the number of internet users, with 538 million, yet they only have 40% penetration.
- India is third with the number of internet users at 137 million, yet they only have a tiny 11% penetration.
Of course, not all users are created equal, at least from an advertiser’s perspective……the purchasing power of the average user in China or India pales in comparison to the purchasing power of the average user in the US.
Still, the number of potential additional internet users coming China and India is staggering.
What’s the best domain angle to play? I’ll stick primarily with the globally recognized .com, others will invest in country codes. Some will focus on numeric domains, others will invest in IDNs.
The beauty of domains is that there is money to be made with all those approaches.
imo forcing international surfers to type in latin when they speak Chinese or Hindi is crazy. idn.com’s and idn.cctlds are the future imho.
I wholeheartedly agree that they’re part of the future. How big a part is the $60 million question.
While latin.com’s will stay king of the pile for now it’s hard to ignore the above stats. Individual’s and business’s in China, India, South America, Russia etc will need monikers’ to bring in customers. Their own language would be the obvious solution.