Asia will be $80bn Internet opportunity by 2015, India $14bn

Asia, as per McKinsey, has 500 million internet users, of which 80 million are in India and 385 million in China. The Asian countries considered by the McKinsey study are China, India and Malaysia. These are the 2009 estimates. By 2015, the number of Internet users in these three Asian countries will grow by 140% to 1.2 billion users, so 700 million new Internet users will be added in the next five years. Most of the users will be accessing Internet from mobile devices. That kind of growth, if true, would be really explosive. 

If similar projections were made for mobile growth in Asia in year 2000, people would have brushed it off. But look at the number of mobile connections in just India and China. 

 

  1. China currently has 385 million Internet users and this will almost double in 2015 to 770 million.
  2. India has 80 million Internet users and this will quadrupled to 370 million users. That is 7 percent of the population to 28 percent of the population. 
  3. Malaysia has 15 million Internet users (which is 55 percent of its population). This will grow to 25 million.

 

There’s a key thread which ties up this explosive growth – mobile. By mobile it will not be the mobile phone but all the devices which can access Internet on the go. These devices will dominate the Internet consumption in Asia. Mobile internet access will grab more than 60 percent of the overall share. 

Monetary opportunity is huge too. India’s Internet opportunities in 2009 are at $3billion. This could go up to $14 billion by 2015. The opportunities are for content, services and access. China will be a $61 billion market and Malaysia $4billion market. 

Internet and anything related to it is a potential goldmine in Asia. Who gets what is the question.