Since Merryfield must still be asleep, I thought I'd beat her to the punch with a post...ARO
chinaonline.com
Sina, Sohu sit comfortably atop IAMAsia's latest survey
By Anita Narayan
ChinaOnline News
(1 March 2001) Sina.com and Sohu.com are still the tops in China, according to a new survey.
On Feb. 27, the Hong Kong-based Interactive Audience Measurement Asia (IAMAsia) announced the top individual domain names and Web properties, or combinations of domain names owned by the same company, for January.
Although Internet cafés are popular in China, IAMAsia only collects data from a representative panel of home Internet users in Hong Kong, Taiwan and 18 cities across the mainland for its monthly rankings. The data is weighted and then projected onto the entire home Internet-user population in the mainland and across the greater China region.
''There are a number of challenges in measuring Internet usage at locations other than the home. In the workplace, for example, many employers are reluctant to allow their employees to be monitored, and it's difficult to obtain a representative sample of Internet users at work,'' Steve Yap, director of marketing and communications at IAMAsia, told ChinaOnline.
''Obtaining a representative sample is also difficult at Internet cafés, as we do not know in advance who is going to use the computer. Also, Internet terminals at cafés are shared by a large number of people. There is no simple solution to ensure that we can identify who each individual user is,'' he added.
IAMAsia is currently looking into ways to measure other locations, according to Yap.
''However, it's worth noting that no one anywhere has yet figured out an ideal solution for measuring non-home usage—not even in the U.S.,'' he said.
Mainland surfing activities
In terms of individual domain names, Sina.com drew the largest home audience for the second consecutive month, with 4.44 million visitors, up from the 4.08 million unique users reported in December 2000. Sina is one of four companies—including Microsoft Corp., Yahoo! and Chinadotcom—that appear in the top-20 property rankings in all three Chinese markets.
As in the previous month, Netease’s 163.com placed second, with 4.21 million visitors, a jump from the 3.92 million people reported in December 2000. Sohu.com once again placed third, with a home audience of 4.15 million, up from the 3.76 million users the previous month.
Sohu.com Inc., which includes Sohu.com, ChinaRen.com and other sites, claimed the top spot for the second consecutive month in terms of Web property rankings, with 4.78 million users. This was slightly up from the 4.35 million reported in December 2000.
Sina.com’s family of sites once again ranked second, drawing in a total of 4.52 million visitors, up from the 4.18 million users the previous month. And Netease.com Inc. again placed third, with a total of 4.28 million users, slightly up from the 4.1 million home users reported in December 2000.
Hong Kong and Taiwan
''The first full month's data for 2001 underscores a number of trends first identified last year. The predominance of locally based properties on the mainland continues, with the Big Three portals still commanding much larger audiences than their foreign rivals,'' Bega Ng, director of analysis at IAMAsia, said in a company statement.
''In comparison, international players such as Yahoo! and Microsoft have been much more successful in building audience share in Hong Kong. Somewhere in the middle lies Taiwan: While Yahoo!'s acquisition of Kimo [the island’s largest Web portal] has given it a dominant share of the Taiwan audience, local players such as YAM and PC Home continue to attract large numbers of Internet users to their offerings,'' Ng added.
Yahoo!’s hold on both Hong Kong and Taiwan were evident from IAMAsia’s January figures. Yahoo.com ranked as the top domain name for Hong Kong, with 1.3 million users, and the Yahoo! family of sites was the top Web property, with 1.4 million users. Similarly, in Taiwan, the Kimo.com domain name ranked No. 1, with 4.4 million users, and the Yahoo! sites were the top Web property, with 4.52 million visitors.
Internet usage
Any measure of Internet surfing activities and popular Web sites calls into question how many Internet users there are in the first place.
According to Yap, ''There were 2.2 million Internet users in Hong Kong as of October 2000, and 6.4 million Internet users in Taiwan as of July 2000.''
The mainland figures, however, are a bit more controversial.
On Jan. 17, Beijing’s Internet monitoring agency, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), released its seventh report on the development of Internet use in China, in which it found that 22.5 million people had access to the Web.
Yet, according to IAMAsia’s own statistics released on Jan. 11, only 15.2 million people on the mainland had Internet access.
''Our latest figure, current as of October 2000, is 15.2 million Internet users. It is misleading to compare our figure with CNNIC's because we are measuring different things: different periods of time and different definitions of what comprises an ‘Internet user,’ '' Yap pointed out.
The CNNIC counts Chinese citizens who have a separate or shared computer with access to the Internet or an Internet account. Whoever has access to the Internet—whether through individual PCs, Internet cafés, dial-up access or leased lines—is an Internet user, the Feb. 6 Beijing Qingnian Bao (Beijing Youth Daily) reported.
IAMAsia, on the other hand, only takes into account users who have logged on to the Internet from any usage location, including Internet cafés, at least once in the four weeks before taking the firm’s survey.
Despite the difference in statistics, everyone seems to agree that Internet usage in China will continue to expand.
''The number of people going online in China will continue to grow strongly, boosted by the lowering of [Internet service provider] tariffs and the ever-increasing affordability of personal computers. International bandwidth is being added at a rapid rate, meaning that the problems with slow access will diminish,'' Yap said.
Moreover, ''The cheap and easy availability of home broadband access promises to be a major driver, such as in Shanghai, where China Telecom is now offering [asymmetric digital subscriber line] services at not much more than the average cost of dialup access. The increasing variety and depth of Internet content and services targeted at mainland Chinese is both a consequence and a driver of further growth.''
Mainland figures for January
Domain Home audience
1 Sina.com 4,442,000
2 163.com 4,210,000
3 Sohu.com 4,153,000
4 ChinaRen.com 2,710,000
5 Microsoft.com 2,254,000
6 Yahoo.com 2,059,000
7 163.net 1,857,000
8 eTang.com 1,662,000
9 263.net 1,550,000
10 China.com 1,463,000
11 MyRice.com 1,252,000
12 CnInfo.net 1,233,000
13 126.com 1,046,000
14 21cn.com 987,000
15 Fm365.com 962,000
16 Msn.com 947,000
17 TopCool.net 849,000
18 Kaxiu.com 847,000
19 Online.sh.cn 808,000
20 TenCent.com 779,000
Property Home audience
1 Sohu.com Inc. 4,778,000
2 Sina.com sites 4,517,000
3 Netease.com Inc. 4,282,000
4 Microsoft sites 2,919,000
5 Yahoo! sites 2,148,000
6 Capital Online Inc. 2,134,000
7 Tom.com Enterprises Ltd. 2,035,000
8 eTang.com Inc. 1,662,000
9 China Telecom 1,564,000
10 Chinadotcom Corp. 1,481,000
11 Main Square Holdings Ltd. 1,252,000
12 Legend Ltd. 1,045,000
13 21cn Corp. 997,000
14 Cardshow Arts Ltd. 847,000
15 eLong.com Inc. 839,000
16 Shanghai Information Industry Ltd. 808,000
17 Chinanet Infotech and Service Inc. 791,000
18 TenCent Communications Corp. 779,000
19 Excite Network 727,000
20 Cool168.com Ltd. 674,000
Hong Kong figures for January
Domain Home audience
1 Yahoo.com 1,302,000
2 Geocities.com 911,000
3 Msn.com 842,000
4 Microsoft.com 824,000
5 HongKong.com 770,000
6 Netvigator.com 764,000
7 Passport.com 757,000
8 Icq.com 698,000
9 v3.com 627,000
10 Uhome.net 597,000
11 Sina.com.hk 587,000
12 Atnext.com 587,000
13 Nbci.com 562,000
14 Info.gov.hk 503,000
15 Heha.net 419,000
16 Appledaily.com.hk 406,000
17 Tvb.com 404,000
18 Hk007.com 379,000
19 Cnet.com 370,000
20 Pchome.com.tw 331,000
Property Home audience
1 Yahoo! sites 1,412,000
2 Microsoft sites 1,356,000
3 AOL/Time Warner sites 925,000
4 Pacific Century Cyberworks 916,000
5 Chinadotcom Corp. 802,000
6 FortuneCity 710,000
7 Next Media Ltd. 652,000
8 Lycos 651,000
9 Sina sites 617,000
10 Uhome.net Ltd. 597,000
11 NBC Internet 573,000
12 Hong Kong SAR Government sites 509,000
13 HK007.com 430,000
14 HehaNet Ltd. 419,000
15 Television Broadcasts Ltd. 404,000
16 CNET Networks Inc. 404,000
17 Oriental Press Ltd. 403,000
18 InfoSpace Inc. 379,000
19 InternetFuel.com Inc 377,000
20 Skynet Ltd. 371,000
Taiwan figures for January
Domain Home audience
1 Kimo.com.tw 4,402,000
2 Pchome.com.tw 3,100,000
3 Hinet.net 2,451,000
4 Microsoft.com 2,440,000
5 Geocities.com 2,433,000
6 Yam.com 2,353,000
7 Sina.com.tw 1,925,000
8 Yahoo.com 1,698,000
9 Netvigator.com.tw 1,679,000
10 v3.com 1,662,000
11 TacoMet.com.tw 1,479,000
12 Nbci.com 1,427,000
13 2u.com.tw 1,228,000
14 Exitfuel.com 1,204,000
15 Shesay.com 1,200,000
16 Seed.net.tw 1,152,000
17 Tacocity.com.tw 1,128,000
18 Hypermart.net 1,066,000
19 Msn.com.tw 1,016,000
20 CityFamily.com.tw 973,000
Property Home audience
1 Yahoo! sites 4,524,000
2 PC Home Online Ltd. 3,225,000
3 Microsoft sites 2,956,000
4 Chunghwa Telecom Ltd. 2,551,000
5 Yam Digital Technology Ltd. 2,353,000
6 Sina sites 2,021,000
7 FortuneCity 1,925,000
8 Taco Information and Network 1,856,000
9 Pacific Century Cyberworks 1,750,000
10 Taiwan Government sites 1,549,000
11 NBC Internet 1,427,000
12 Lycos 1,370,000
13 InfoSpace Inc. 1,312,000
14 Digital United Inc. 1,261,000
15 InternetFuel.com Inc 1,259,000
16 2u.com Ltd. 1,228,000
17 AtCom Internet Marketing 1,200,000
18 Hoshin Gigamedia Center 1,150,000
19 Blue Mongoose Inc. 1,098,000
20 City Family 973,000
Source: IAMAsia.com
To contact Anita Narayan:
P: (312) 335-3327
F: (312) 335-9299
E: anarayan@chinaonline.com |
