These are sobering statistics to those operating online and targeting the US principally:

And the U.S. is only part of the story. He noted that North America now accounts for just 16% of worldwide Internet users, down from 35% in 2000. “[Red] China has more Internet connections than the U.S., and most of them are on their phones … If you’re building products and services just for the U.S. market, you're giving up 80% of the market,” he told the audience. Even though the global potential for online services is huge, he doesn't see enough business plans that have “an international vision of globalization.”

   I remember when our websites were getting 70 per cent or more of our traffic from the US, and that was in the late 1990s. Today, the picture is remarkably different: high access in the US does not equate to what is considered high traffic today. Web presences need to be globally relevant, and that includes blogs like this. Those who are multilingual have an advantage—especially if one of those languages is Chinese.
   The above is from AOL’s Ted Leonsis, quoted in the latest Knowledge@Wharton. Mr Leonsis believes now is the best time to be an entrepreneur, based on what he has seen in his life. He may be right: the opportunities are there. We just have to be globally minded (and this means east and west) enough to seize them. Posted by Jack Yan, 02:36  permalink

comments

Post a Comment  Links to this post