Hey folks,
For quite some time now, I've wanted to write about something that's occurred to my head.
I once had a nice debate with Vaish about how Google left China so callously. How it is such a huge growth market and how walking out of it is such a bad idea.
I tend to think that the growth of an internet market lies in the more fundamental factors such as tele-density, availability of more connectivity options, quality of connectivity et al. In that sense, it is more of an infrastructural growth than a growth in terms of analytic numbers.
Let me explain. Google getting more search requests from the same number of people (or a negligibly more number of people) would only mean that the existing Internet populace is getting more savvy at using the Internet. It could mean that they are more aware of how to go about finding what they want on the Internet and that they are now hooked to more services based out of the Internet.
For instance, taking my street into account, every household has had Internet access for the last 5 years. Most of them are on unlimited broadband Internet and others are on limited-data packages. Nonetheless everyone has broadband. From what we all were a decade ago to what we are today is growth. Real growth.
But, in 5 years of using the Internet, most folks are savvy enough to check and send emails, read newspapers, send greeting cards online, order books online. Some even have blogs. This is internal diversification of the same market. Folks are getting savvier w.r.t the Internet. However, this is not the fundamental growth of the Internet market in India.
This will only lead to more search requests from the same number of people. Some folks would argue that this is growth too. I agree. But as people get smarter, they know exactly where to find what. Some users might shift to Bing. Some might shift to Cuil. Some might shift to Yahoo. Some might shift to Vimeo or Ping.fm or Metacafe, from Youtube. In any of the above cases, the number of search requests are on the rise. But the market could get differently segmented based on a lot of preferential factors.
Looking from this angle, a market need not be a high-growth market for a service provider based on increasing number of inbound service requests alone. It is the fundamental growth that decides how fast a market expands. It is slow, expensive and highly organic. But, that alone is purely sustainable growth.
Please put down your views in the comments section.
Yours Skeptically,
uleadin
Posted via email from uleadin
I think even people getting savvier is important. As important as getting more people. This, I feel, is needed to sustain growth. If not for this internal diversification, people would probably stop using the internet or reduce their broadband plans. Take for example a device which am going to call Stupid because I don’t remember the name. Stupid, is the size of a compact DVD player and you can plug-in your telephone wire in it and check your email. Only that. This was back in early 2001 or around that time. If I didn’t have screensavers, background images, news posts, top 10 interesting sites et al to visit, my parents would’ve sold my comp and bought be Stupid instead. These screensavers are today’s blogs, social media and whatever stuff that is new.