China has 31.65 million broadband homes.
And about 103 million Internet users , according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center. ABout 53 million of those are on broadband. China ranks second to the U.S. in both Internet user numbers and broadband user numbers. That’s just big!
Yes, China internet use is huge and growing. As you noted it is second to the U.S. in internet users, but within 3 years it is expected to take over the top slot.
Additionally, Chinese consumer spending is predicted to quintuple over next 10 years to $3.7 trillion!
Also, the China market is HUGE in the wireless and online gaming space with close to 400MM+ mobile users.
We have some addtional stats about China and the internet and advertising market posted on our blog that we pulled together while doing some research for a Chinese internet ad agency client of ours: http://blackinc.typepad.com/future/2005/06/is_the_china_in.html
URL got cut off above, hopefully this will work:
http://blackinc.typepad.com/future/2005/06/is_the_china_in.html
This is clearly not counting the millions who use Internet cafes. By one count, around 280 thousand cafes with more than 100 PCs. Multiplying that out: that’s 28,000,000 PCs. Assuming each PC is used by only 3 people taking turns full time (an absurdly conservative estimate), there are no fewer 125 million Chinese using Internet cafes.