Melbourne, Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The number of Asians connected to the Internet, particularly in China, is poised to surge past U.S. in the next few years, executives told the World Economic Forum's Asia Pacific summit.
Asia will make up almost half the world's population connected to the Internet by 2003 as the region's countries build new telecommunication networks to handle more users, said Masayoshi Son, president of Softbank Corp., Japan's biggest Internet-related investor.
Son said the number of people using the Internet worldwide will probably rise to 1 billion in three years from 300 million users today, with most new users coming from Asia. That presents an opportunity for companies in Asia developing new technologies that support the Internet, including electronic business-to- business trading, he said.
``In the next two to three years, the most important thing is broadband, B2B and wireless,'' Son said. ``I think that companies that have been very successful in Internet would be challenged by these new players who have a strong focus on these areas.''
Others agree Asia will dominate world growth in Internet usage, with television and other wireless applications expected to be a major source of Internet delivery.
``The current growth rates indicate that Asia is actually growing faster, in both the number of Internet service providers and the number of people getting inter-connected,'' said Eric Schmidt, chief executive at Novell Inc., a U.S. maker of computer- network management software.
Asia's Good News
``Current growth rates of the Internet outside the U.S. in general are faster than they are in the U.S., which I think is a good thing,'' Schmidt told the forum. ``I think the message is very good for Asia.''
Earlier, Telstra Corp. Chief Executive Ziggy Switkowski said the adoption of technology to social and commercial applications is well advanced in parts of Asia. Melbourne-based Telstra is Australia's No. 1 Internet company.
``We shouldn't make the assumption that Asia is at a very early stage of development, because in a number of countries and a large number of applications, the progress that is evident is quite formidable,'' he told the forum.
It's estimated Japan has 27 million Internet users, ahead of China with 16.9 million users and South Korea with 15.3 million. Australia has 7.3 million.
Matter of When
Accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu released a survey, saying Asian Internet users are growing at a compound rate of about 45 percent. It said China is expected to double its number of users every six months, a rate of growth that could lead China to boast the world's biggest online population within 10 years.
``The rate of infrastructure development in China is mind- blowing,'' Peter Williams, e-business practice partner at Deloitte, said in an interview, adding China is expected to spend up to $750 billion on Internet-related infrastructure over the next two years.
``The potential for Asia, and in particular China, to overtake the west in terms of e-commerce uptake is not a matter of if, but when,'' he said. |
