China's Online Population Overtakes U.S.; India's is Rising Next

(MoneyWatch)  Since the last time we checked in on the Internet growth in China and India, there have been some new developments that warrant an update. First, according to Xinhua News Agency, China caught up with the U.S. earlier this spring, with both countries counting 221 million Internet users. Plus, whereas the U.S. market penetration has leveled off at around 71 percent of the population, China's is only at 16 percent.

Over time, the online population in China will dwarf that in the U.S. by three- or four-fold. India, with a far smaller fraction of its population online, should eventually leaprog China to become the biggest online market on the planet.

Meanwhile, in his new book, "The Post-American World," Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria documents the exponential growth of media markets in India, China, and Brazil, among other countries. "Today, India has 18 all-news channels of its own," he reports.

India boasts of the biggest English-language newspaper in the world -- The Times of India, with 3.5 million readers. As literacy increases in India, newspaper circulation is growing at double-digit rates. Over 100 new publications launched in 2006 alone, says the World Association of Newspapers.
One big Western newspaper that recognizes the opportunity these emerging media markets represent is The Financial Times. The U.K.-based paper is launching a magazine in China called RUI, which means "intelligence" in Mandarin.

Another measure of strength is the growth of various Asian mobile companies, including China Mobile, which, with roughly 400 million subscribers is the world's largest. Since many people in China and India access the Internet via cellphones or in cybercafes, as opposed to owning a laptop, the patterns of growth differ from what we are used to in the West.

All of these developments should be providing the impetus for traditional US media companies to be investing overseas, but few seem to be aggressively doing so. Contrast this with Google (including its Google News), which counts over half of its business overseas now.

Positioning any new media company for success has to include a global strategy. Potential users are everywhere, not just in your backyard (subscription area). The content does not necessarily need to change so much as the business model. After all, there is a little bit of "global" in all of us, which adds up to an enormous market opportunity -- for those who act on it.