Internet waits for vernacular pilot in India

[drbiohealth]

The prospect of the number of India’s netizens growing is bleak, given that most among the local population that can speak English (about 150 million), the lingua franca on the net, are already on the web. “The English speaking market in India is saturated,” says Deepak Maheswari, secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_f...tent_id=137180

[Giant]

I believe Indian IDN is a good investment opportunity.

[tee1]

Thanks for posting the link. Providing people with content in the their native language great idea It may be a few years but once that hits big, I bet they staring looking to put their native language content on native language domains.

DrBio you could help them out with that couldn't you?

tee1

[Wot]

Originally Posted by drbiohealth

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_f...tent_id=137180

Good news for idns but the figures don't quite add up , if all 150 million english speakers are on the web there seems to 100 million missing.

Possibly the "family" group makes up the missing numbers ?

››› INDIA


IN - 1,112,225,812 population - Area: 3,166,944 sq km


Capital City: New Delhi - GNI p.c.US$ 620 ('04), per World Bank


50,600,000 Internet users as of Dec./05, 4.5% penetration, per C.I.Alma.

[drbiohealth]

You may be right, Wot. Well, I also don't take reported figures too seriously as they usually tend to vary from one report to the other. However, reports such as this are important sensors to what might happen in this industry. There are some subtle, yet crucial, points in this report that are giving us some hints on the future. Sensing the initial trend is perhaps the way to go.

Here is another related report you might want to read.
http://www.ciol.com/content/search/s...sp?artid=87326

Originally Posted by Wot

Good news for idns but the figures don't quite add up , if all 150 million english speakers are on the web there seems to 100 million missing.

Possibly the "family" group makes up the missing numbers ?

››› INDIA


IN - 1,112,225,812 population - Area: 3,166,944 sq km


Capital City: New Delhi - GNI p.c.US$ 620 ('04), per World Bank


50,600,000 Internet users as of Dec./05, 4.5% penetration, per C.I.Alma.

[touchring]

Hehe, statistics only show trend, not absolute reality.

Does anyone believe in their country's reported CPI increments?

In more developed economies, it's always 1-3%...

[drbiohealth]

I believe its a foregone conclusion that keyword rich IDNs are one of the best ways to rank higher in a search engine. My experience says that Google, aside other factors, gives quite a lot of weightage to "exact" keyword match in the domain (aptly explained by blastfromthepast in one of the threads), and also to how old your website/page is. Now look at this - countries like India currently have very little webpages in local lingos ..... and that's a big opportunity - guess you got the hint . Indic sites built around great keywords will turn into gold as time passes by....simple because ur content built now will keep on gaining more and more weight overtime...on the contrary, same is not true with Japan and China where there are already millions of webpages for most keywords and therefore you have a little competition there to rank on top. However, this also highlights the importance of IDNs in those countries though, if one were to beat those millions of pages.

Originally Posted by tee1

Thanks for posting the link. Providing people with content in the their native language great idea It may be a few years but once that hits big, I bet they staring looking to put their native language content on native language domains.

DrBio you could help them out with that couldn't you?

tee1

[ekal]

Aren't we looking at a situation where no one language will dominate but English and Hindi will probably emerge as the two leaders?

Europe might be a good comparison - English is ahead but lots of other languages, particularly German, have important market shares.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by ekal

Aren't we looking at a situation where no one language will dominate but English and Hindi will probably emerge as the two leaders?

Europe might be a good comparison - English is ahead but lots of other languages, particularly German, have important market shares.

It depends on your definition of English speaker.

The CIA seem to count everyone that can say "Good Morning" as an English speaker.

The definition that we are looking for is the preferred browsing language, given equal access to content. My guess that would put English down around the 3% level, but only time will tell.

Originally Posted by drbiohealth

I believe its a foregone conclusion that keyword rich IDNs are one of the best ways to rank higher in a search engine. My experience says that Google, aside other factors, gives quite a lot of weightage to "exact" keyword match in the domain (aptly explained by blastfromthepast in one of the threads), and also to how old your website/page is. Now look at this - countries like India currently have very little webpages in local lingos ..... and that's a big opportunity - guess you got the hint . Indic sites built around great keywords will turn into gold as time passes by....simple because ur content built now will keep on gaining more and more weight overtime...on the contrary, same is not true with Japan and China where there are already millions of webpages for most keywords and therefore you have a little competition there to rank on top. However, this also highlights the importance of IDNs in those countries though, if one were to beat those millions of pages.

Things might be moving slowly but they are moving!

Tamil evidence of Ranking:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...AE%B2%E0%AF%8D

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...8D&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...88&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...8D&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...88&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...81&btnG=Search

Tamil evidence of Google Adwords:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...AE%A4%E0%AF%88

[a2zofb2b]

According to DEEPAK MAHESHWARI, secretary, Internet Service Providers Association of India
( http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_f...tent_id=137844)

=========================================================
Clearly, the centre of gravity of the Internet has been shifting away from the US and is destined to relocate somewhere between China and India within the next two decades.

Localised content has three distinct dimensions local context, local hosting and in local language(s). It is pertinent to mention that while more than three-fourths of the Internet traffic in China, Japan and Korea does not leave the respective country, in India less than one-fourth of the traffic is domestic.

However, this high level of international traffic is not a matter of national pride. Rather, it represents the socio-economic profile of current Internet users and the challenges faced by those who do not yet have access to it.

Touch-screens with intuitive icons, machine translation algorithms and Unicode compliant characters for Indian language alphabets would also help. Internationalised domain names (IDN) is another important area of work so that even the domain name can be in the local language.
==========================================================

[drbiohealth]

That's impressive, Dave!

Compelling argument!

Originally Posted by a2zofb2b

Localised content has three distinct dimensions local context, local hosting and in local language(s). It is pertinent to mention that while more than three-fourths of the Internet traffic in China, Japan and Korea does not leave the respective country, in India less than one-fourth of the traffic is domestic.

However, this high level of international traffic is not a matter of national pride. Rather, it represents the socio-economic profile of current Internet users and the challenges faced by those who do not yet have access to it.