Wow! China is a huge market. I know it was very big, but didn't know it's this huge. I wonder if China has equally good Startup ecosystem like USA which promotes innovation and entrepreneurship. Also, another question is - do US startups even have a strategy to focus equally on Chinese market like US market? If yes, how do they go about doing that?
Don't be fooled, if you consider income or even worse spending China is still a tiny market. 20 years from now it might be far more important, but for now it only has a voracious appetite for a small number of imports such as Oil and industrial secrets.
I've seen thai school teachers spend $10s of dollars on facebook games. In thai school teacher wages, that is something like like 3% to 10% of their monthly wage, which is significant. Don't underestimate a market like china. Protection from psychological traps like bad spending and keeping up with the jonses tend to be less there too unfortunately/fortunately.
Well, that just means it's a great time to get into that market. If had already become huge and spending was huge, there would be lots of startups focusing on china.
I think it's important to consider population, so maybe measure Internet penetration as a percentage of the population.
For example:
Internet Users in US: 230,630,000
Population of US: 307,006,550 people
That's roughly 75% of the US population.
Internet Users in China: 298,000,000 people
Population of China: 1,324,655,000
That's roughly 22.5% of the Chinese population.
However, by looking at the graph, we can also see that the growth of the Internet population is growing (exponentially) at a much faster rate in China than it ever did in the US.
You've got a great point there but let me add something. The question if percentages or absolute numbers are valuable depends on the goal of your investigation. When you want to determine the technological advancement of a country going for the relative numbers should be the way to go. However when you want to determine if a country should be a target market for your startup/company absolute numbers are fine. Even though only 22,5% of the Chinese people use the internet 298,000,000 users is still a huge market. Definitely to consider targeting.
You are absolutely correct. The goal of your investigation does in fact dictate if you should use percentages or absolute numbers. Likewise, 298 million Chinese Internet users is nothing to sneeze at!
Bingo. Isn't the magic number for hitting near 100% penetration of a household technology around 30%? Once you hit that point, then it will go to nearly 100% within a few years because things just snowball and it is no longer a fringe/geek thing, but something that is common and expected.
I think we all remember when the US had far below 22.5%
That's small consolation to him; his brother, former president of Nigeria, died last year leaving several million dollars behind. They are currently trying to recover them through the aid of western citizens.
Note that the two statements are quite different. The guy you replied to was implying that all Nigerians are scammers. I, on the other hand, implied no such a thing and simply made a joke about a type of fraud commonly originating from Nigeria.
I get the joke. But it's not funny. I've read the same joke about 1000 times on various forums. It's just a somewhat mean statement with no humour at all.
Millions of Nigerians work honest jobs to feed and educate their children. It's hard enough that they have to live through the negative stereotype caused by less than 0.1% who are bad guys.
I cringe when I see that quotation trotted out as some kind of truth. It's a joke, popularized by Mark Twain.
Statistics can be insignificant or misinterpreted, but the statistics themselves aren't lies: they are statements of fact (measurements and calculations based on those measurements). Statistics are some of the best tools we have for teasing meaning out of measurements.
(If the "measurements" are actually made up, then yes, they are lies, but then the fault is with the person cooking the measurements, not the statistical tools they bring to bear. One can also misuse statistical tools, but again, the problem is with the user, not the tools.)
I always felt that the quote indicated that statistics are easily used to mislead with credibility. When I homeschooled my sons, I gave them a choice between the algebra/geometry/calc track and a statistics track. They chose statistics. An interesting book we included in our studies was "How to lie with statistics". (FWIW: I think there was a later book called something like "How to lie with charts and graphs".)
My point was not that statistics are lies but just that the statement "Graphs don't lie" isn't some kind of unquestionable grand truth.
Is it really fair to say that people in China have access to the Internet? Maybe it's better to say that they have access to some AOL-ized version of the Internet, not the actual Internet itself. The difference between an open Internet and a closed one is not just a small difference of degree; they are entirely different things.
I currently live in China and the firewall isn't as bad as it looks. I used to believe it was meant to censor information but I increasingly believe that it is meant to encourage the digital economy in China. The Chinese alternatives (Baidu, TaoBao, RenRen, etc.) would probably have a much harder time without the firewall. That being said, as a free market enthusiast, I disagree with this kind of politics.
It's surely also designed to eliminate news of unrest, such as the famous protests, political and economic dissent, and allow prompt and easy arrest of citizens saying the 'wrong thing' on-line, or expressing opinions that might damage the party's hold on power.
> I currently live in China and the firewall isn't as bad as it looks.
But isn't that because it's ultimately a losing battle? Can't that still be what it was meant for? Promoting Chinese alternatives just seems like a nice benefit in keeping it around.
I sometimes work with developers in China, it's pretty common for me to send a link to some tech info on a blog etc and then have to copy and email the content instead, since the site is blocked for them. Even one site I created myself, which has <10 visitors/day and barely any content was blocked at some point.
The data on India is interesting. I would have thought there would be more than 50 million internet users in India. That's only about 4 per 100 people.
There are more poor people in eight states of India than in the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa
That doesn't say anything about the poverty rate.
When the vast central Indian Madhya Pradesh state, which has a population of 70 million, was compared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the war-racked African state of 62 million inhabitants, the two were found to have near-identical levels of poverty.
So that means certain parts of India have equal or greater levels of poverty than certain parts of Africa. But the poverty rate as a whole is lower.
There is no web censorship in Nigeria, only ISP's might ban a user from their network if a report was made about that user. The average 'broadband' speed in Nigeria is 200-400kbps and mostly wireless access. But with the completion of the MainOne submarine cable, it is expected that things here will change for the better. Nigeria's population is huge, 150million although the purchasing power of the average citizen is low, It's a strong emerging market.
Yes it's impressive, if time stood still and politics never changed, but that's not how the world works :) Everyone knows from the lesson of "retrospectivity" that growth can be just a temporary rise, or just the spike before a decline etc.
If we look at the UK's numbers in that same graph, after having travelled back to 2002 in our time machine, we could also say "but look at the rate of growth the past 4 years!", but looking back at the graph today, with "8 years later" of extra data...
My underlying point was that no mistake in graphs and statistics is as common as the repeated mistake of us trying to predict the future from contemporary numbers, and always ending up being wrong a few years later down the road. Statistics need lots of time to mature and settle.
Cambodia has internet cafes nearly everywhere in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. I volunteered for an NGO sponsored project to improve internet penetration, but it was quickly shelved after the first initial meetings when it was shown that Khmer business people were opening cyber cafes at an astronomical rate. So we decided it was better to stimulate the local economy by not meddling with it, and ruining these businesses with landfill-grade donated computers and imported expertise.
It was amazing to see motorcycles with saddle-like bags delivering Acer computers to dusty markets :-) They're usually carefully wrapped in multiple layers of plastic and styrofoam to protect from the elements.
I read that Iranian-Americans are the most educated immigrants -- or one of the most according to the census. It makes sense that they would be technologically advanced.
The reason why I was surprised is because Iran is vilified often in the news, so I thought the people of Iran were repressed, living in a sort of dictatorial regime, where information is heavily censored, a bit like a slightly more lenient North Korea.
But if these people have access to the entire internet, then I am slightly confused.
Cambodia's largest export is rice. The country is bisected by the mighty Mekong river and the Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Asia. The whole country is lush; when it rains, the drops hurt your skin. Weeks of non-stop thunder and the soil doesn't seem to down a sip of it.
If you believed in a fertility god, you would renounce your faith in it within sight of Cambodia, for the cruel abundance it has inflicted upon that land.
I don't know about happiness. That is a very vague, subjective word which I am not sure it even means much in substance, but, if prosperity makes people happy, then yes I guess internet access makes you happy. So too, if autonomy, that is access to knowledge so that you have the means of pursuing your aims makes people happy, then yes I do think that access to the internet makes you happy.
So too I suppose if having better health information, satisfying the desire for fairness through learning of say if others get things on merit or other means, being able to see on video and talk for however long you want for free with your parents who might live in another town and you do not have the means to visit them... I suppose, even assume, that access to the internet makes you happier yes.
As for distractions, really they are laziness rather than distraction. I doubt people in the middle ages where fulfilling their potential and doing what they willed all the time. Besides, perhaps access to the internet can help you manage the distractions.
From the smiley though I suppose you weren't serious, but I do feel for the people of North Korea and I think we are a bit wrong to ignore their plight.
I suppose you're right. It was the rich man's bias, thinking that you don't need money to be happy. (That word again). Also, I didn't realize that you were speaking more generally.
Of course the lack of internet access is also related to other things (e.g. food shortage) that I didn't refer to.
25 million pretty normal people would not find your statement very nice. The U.S sends a lot of Viagra spam - but that does not mean that all the internet users are sending viagra spam.
Spam reaches a lot of people, because that's its intent. Extrapolating from spam is silly.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_us...