A single website with 4-million users, isn’t an attractive business - CHINESE BLOGGERS

Because SA's internet is still crawling along, I do wonder whether it will come of age during these increasingly cost cutting times. My point is some people think it is guaranteed, it is a given. I'd like to believe that, but I believe it is by no means certain. A 5 million strong audience is fiddlesticks. South Africa stands to learn a lot from South Korea, with a comparable population. The Korean online industry is huge. Guess what? Penetration is close to 100%. Here it is less than 10%. And computer sales are now scheduled to drop in South Africa.

clipped from www.matthewbuckland.com It hit home for me in a big way when we hosted a delegation of chinese bloggers at 24.com. They were interested to know how we made online businesses in an entire market of only 5-million users. A single website over there with 4-million users, isn’t an attractive business they told me. They play in a market of something like 300-million internet users. So I replied, to sceptical looks, that it’s not just about numbers and but about pricing and positioning — and there are good online businesses here. For example, the country has more internet users than countries such as Austria, Czech Republic. It’s way bigger than the offerings of New Zealand or Ireland (In fact double the size). The local online market is comparable to Switzerland, Belgium or Saudi Arabia. But still, it’s just not good enough and way below potential. Despite South Africa being the 27th largest country in the world by GDP, it ranks a dismal 43rd for number of internet users, with around 5-million.