The NY Times reports that China has surpassed the US in terms of Internet users. This comes via China’s state-controlled Internet Network Information Center. Here are the key numbers:
United States
220 million Internet users
70% penetration
China
253 million Internet users
19% penetration
For readers of this blog, this development is hardly news. But it’s significant nonetheless. After all, the US isn’t exactly going to catch back up in this regard. China wins the numbers game, at least when it comes to people.
Here’s an interesting excerpt from the article:
Baidu, for instance, said on Thursday that its second-quarter net profit had jumped 81 percent. During that period, Baidu had a 63 percent share of China’s search engine market, while Google had about 26 percent, with Yahoo trailing far behind, according to iResearch, a market research firm based in Beijing.
Tencent, a popular site for social networking and gaming, now has a stock market value of $15 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable Internet companies. In comparison, Amazon.com is valued at about $30 billion.
China also leads in having the world’s most popular country code (.cn).
