September 05, 2006
China's Mobile and Broadband Markets Likely To Exceed India's
Recent talk was that India's mobile phone market would be the largest in the world. But not surprisingly, China might exceed that. The 400 million mobile phones they'll produce this year make up half the world's output and will be used in other countries, but they could just as well be used there, too.
As for India, its come a long way. One East Indian friend joked to me that in India, even the janitor has a cell phone. Which was not meant to be derogatory, but to indicate how far the country has come. Not so long ago, it had daily power outages, but now has the juice to drive cellular networks that include everyone in several financial classes.
However, with the increasing number of middle-class citizens in China, it's more than possible that the Chinese mobile market may exceed India's, where they're focusing on IPTV for some reason. The VoIP market in Asia in general is growing. Though with issues such as VoIP service being illegal in China, I'm not sure if certain types of phones and PDAs are allowed in the country or not.
Even if China and India actually run close numbers for mobile use, broadband use in China is growing at about 80% annually and expected to reach 130 million users by 2010. Part of the increase will be a side effect of hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Given the political situation in China, and the fact that VoIP is illegal there, it might be difficult to understand how that government would allow the estimated 80 million users playing online games. When you run a country banning the use of certain words in print or online, it's hard to let any sort of digital interaction go unmonitored. This sort of atmosphere would permeate into a lot of things, including the way events are handled and technologies deployed.
However, dig deep into the history of the Olympics during the time that Juan Antonio Samaranch was top dog of the IOC (International Olympics Committee), and you'll see that the Olympics actually were repeatedly granted to countries and regions where there was political, civil, and/or social unrest,. The net result of hosting the Olympics in those locales actually improved conditions considerably.
Whether or not this happens in China, resulting in more open government policies, remains to be seen. But if it does, China will likely dominate in Internet use whether, whether mobile or stationary, and there will be an explosion of VoIP services and possibly some innovations.
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