India online stats, some internet numbers

A great new study by eMarketer on the Indian online market lays to rest some of the burning questions in my (and your) mind on the size of the Indian Internet marketing. In one word, its SMALL! It’s small today and even as per their projections, it will remain small in the foreseeable future. Well it’s small when talking in relative terms to other countries. See chart below:

http://www.emarketer.com/images/chart_gifs/072001-073000/072599.gif

What is exciting for me however is the fact that the number of internet users in India is going to be more than 5 times that in Australia, and almost double of those in South Korea! Yes the size of this market is growing at a scorching pace. The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) predicts a 100 million internet users in India by 2007, slightly higher than eMarketer’s predictions. Either way you look at it there is going to be a huge amount of users accessing the internet in India in the next few years. And we have’nt even included the potential of mobile internet into these figures yet!

http://www.emarketer.com/images/chart_gifs/073001-074000/073470.gif

And, they are going to be buying. Once again IAMAI, predicts that these users are going to generate over US $ 500 million in revenues by 2006-2007. A mere drop in the bucket when compared to online retail revenues in more developed countries, estimates of this figure in the US are upwards of a US$100 billion. But pretty substantial all the same when thought of in the Indian context. What is this $500 million going kitty going to hold, by the looks of it currently – my guess is online gifts & travel. But who knows what else … what is exciting is some of the categories are not even defined yet, one thing is for sure, there is clearly going to be a market waiting to be served here.

Google You tube acquisition, where do we go now..

Its been a while, but felt like I had to post today on what must surely go down as one of the biggest deals of Internet 2.0. Well you have heard, right – Google acquired You tube in a straight stock swap worth $1.65 billion, yes that is with a ‘b’ ! What is Google doing acquiring a company with 60 employees and really no revenues so far. Here is the DM News take on it.

Here is what I think Google is doing a land grab on the internet and is making a pretty good fist of it so far. They are like any traditional company – brick and mortar and all, utilzing their abundant cash reserves to keep out all forms of competition by creating an empire in the online space that no marketer can really ignore. First the deal with MySpace.com, that darling of web based social media and now You tube. The message is strong and clear either build it yourself (as they did reasonably succesfully with Gmail as a late though clearly viable contendor to Yahoo Mail and Hotmail), or partner with it (MySpace) or buy it (Youtube).

What is going to be interesting is to see whether Google can continue to monitize these new properties, the way it has done such an exceptional job of monetizing its search franchise. I personally think they are very well placed to do exactly that. The beauty of Google’s machine is not the search itself, but I think its the ease of use of its advertising system, which has made it so easy for anyone to come and democratically (sic!) bid on ads anywhere on the web. And that in my humble opinion is going to be what will make Google a true search ++ company. Of course as always watch this space.