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View Full Version : when will IDN-enabled browser usage reach critical mass?


domainguru
11th January 2007, 11:11 PM
I feel this is a vital question for all of us, because only when critical mass is achieved will big players come in with new IDN sites (instead of redirects), offline publicity can occur, and the whole IDN thing will really snowball.

For argument's sake, let's define critical mass as 70% of all Internet users.

Since this critical mass point will vary enormously from country to country, I will kick off with Thailand....

What do we learn from these stats:

http://truehits.net/graph/graph_stat.php#WEB

1) It took 4 years to get Thai IE6 users up from 42% to 90%
2) Firefox penetration in Thailand is negligble - only grown to 3% since start of 2003

Additionally, we know that Windows piracy rates in Thailand are extremely high - perhaps 70% of the installed software base.

Since Microsoft now "validates" all Windows installs prior to allowing online updates, only 30% of current Thai users will be able to upgrade to IE7, that's even if they wanted to.

So the changeover from IE6 to IE7 will be extremely slow. Most IE7 users will come from new machine sales which have Vista installed.

Bearing all this in mind, we estimate it will be 2-3 years before critical mass is achieved in Thailand.

Comments? Estimates for other countries, languages?

Rubber Duck
11th January 2007, 11:34 PM
This is the critical question but your answers may be too pessimistic.

70% is far too high in my opinion. The really money is with the early adopters, especially those that are buying new Vista enabled machines. Those those are pirating their software are not top of the economic pile, by a long chalk. Marketeers will target those with the money!

I would think Offline advertising will start at around the 30% mark. You will see dual advertising to start with. Hopefully large local language on top and smaller ASCII underneath. Don't forget you need to imprint the new branding before you do the switch, not in the aftermath.

As for those with pirated software, it is likely that don't have wonderful installations and will be keen to upgrade if their machines will take it. Vista has been on sale on the Auction in China for over a month now. It won't be long before hookey copies are circulating in Bangkok as well.

The other thing you need to understand is that sites don't need to go fully local at first. It will make sense to do that around the 50% point, but the initial move will most often be some kind of masked forwarding. This is already starting to happen.

Google already have a mirror site in Korea. Does exactly the same as the ASCII version, both access the main Dot com Database, but run in parallel. It does not appear to be indexed yet, so I guess it is still regarded as a Beta, but wherever you navigate on the IDN version it sticks with the IDN URL, it is not masked forwarding. Google and other sites that use a remote database can do this. They just run two local sites in parallel.

I feel this is a vital question for all of us, because only when critical mass is achieved will big players come in with new IDN sites (instead of redirects), offline publicity can occur, and the whole IDN thing will really snowball.

For argument's sake, let's define critical mass as 70% of all Internet users.

Since this critical mass point will vary enormously from country to country, I will kick off with Thailand....

What do we learn from these stats:

http://truehits.net/graph/graph_stat.php#WEB

1) It took 4 years to get Thai IE6 users up from 42% to 90%
2) Firefox penetration in Thailand is negligble - only grown to 3% since start of 2003

Additionally, we know that Windows piracy rates in Thailand are extremely high - perhaps 70% of the installed software base.

Since Microsoft now "validates" all Windows installs prior to allowing online updates, only 30% of current Thai users will be able to upgrade to IE7, that's even if they wanted to.

So the changeover from IE6 to IE7 will be extremely slow. Most IE7 users will come from new machine sales which have Vista installed.

Bearing all this in mind, we estimate it will be 2-3 years before critical mass is achieved in Thailand.

Comments? Estimates for other countries, languages?

domainguru
12th January 2007, 12:37 AM
50% is fine for a figure for "critical mass". No problems there.

But I still feel it will take a good while to reach that level here. Vista is yet another typical M$oft "upgrade", which requires more memory, more processing power. Most Thai machines do not have the power for the upgrade, and probably more importantly, most thais don't feel that an upgrade is necessary.

All I really wanted to do with the post was get a feel for what people thought about which markets would reach critical mass first, and which later.

hanidn
12th January 2007, 01:16 AM
There is a registry patch for the piracy windows xp copy.

This is the URL to get the patch.

mfiles.naver.net/c615f22c3c670ebc66/data23/2006/11/15/7/1IE7.reg

After you install the patch, you can install any ms, yahoo and google ie7 versions without genuine copy check.

After vista and auto update, I believe near_50% of net users will have ie7 by end of august. So on, 70-80% by end of 2007…

I am agreed that the big boys will start their Ads at 50% mass.

touchring
12th January 2007, 04:08 AM
I think critical mass for webmasters will be at least 80% for most languages.

If i'm a webmaster, i'm not going to advertise my IDN (in place of my ASCII) until i'm comfortable that most of my users, like 4 out of 5, can access the name and not see the "The connection has timed out".

For Jp names, though, the critical mass for webmasters will be lower, below 80% since japanese are already familiar with that concept.

gari
14th January 2007, 08:26 PM
Hi All,
Here is my idea for idn critical mass. Taken from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm and assuming all users are using idn browsers. This is what i have come up with:
51% of 100% would equal critical mass, but if you take away 29.9% which would be english users who are not interested in another language, you would then be left with 70.1%, so if you then take 51% from 70.1% you would then get 37.45%
So my figure for critical mass idn enabled browsers would be 37.45%. You can get all the details from the above address. I need to get out more :>)
Regards
Gari

YOUR IDN YOUR LANGUAGE
YOUR LANGUAGE YOUR IDN

Rubber Duck
14th January 2007, 09:38 PM
I think critical mass for webmasters will be at least 80% for most languages.

If i'm a webmaster, i'm not going to advertise my IDN (in place of my ASCII) until i'm comfortable that most of my users, like 4 out of 5, can access the name and not see the "The connection has timed out".

For Jp names, though, the critical mass for webmasters will be lower, below 80% since japanese are already familiar with that concept.

80% is an almost ludicrous figure. The last 20% would take years to convert and probably wouldn't spend anything anyway. The heaviest spenders are likely to be the early adopters, which if you take that strategy will almost certainly end up elsewhere!

What we are talking about is the point where you are switching over from having your site in ASCII or IDN. Both with function side by side. At first IDN will generally be forwarded to ASCII as traffic grows to very substantial levels it is not going to be sensible to rely on forwarding. In many instances parallel sites will run in tandem until the level of ASCII surfers drops to a level where they can reasonable switched to forwarding.

If you are going to only have one site up at a time the logical point would be around 50%. If you are going to run site in parallel then a 20% figure would be sensible point to phase IDN in and 80% would be a sensible point to phase ASCII out.

The advertising thing is a separate issue. It is not forcibly the case that you advertise just one version of the URL, but it is likely that you would make one bigger than the other. It makes sense to start raising public awareness in advance of the changes, but not too much so. If you kick in a parallel site a 20% you can start pushing the IDN Url hard at that point. If you swap at 50% is more likely that your publicity campaign would start at 40% or even 30%. By the time you got to 80% it would be time to drop the ASCII advertising, even as small letters underneath.

All this presumes you have any good data. If any of you has tried to track the progress of IE7, you will know there is very little data and it is of poor quality. Sites that track data are often of technical bent and unrepresentative

If you had data form Yahoo's own site for Japan that would be excellent for Japan. Will you get that data provided? Well, probably not. At the moment, the only data we seem to be getting is the US. Of course, individual sites will be able to collect their own data, but that data will be contigent on the policies they have adopted. They can only count queries that resolve. Queries that don't resolve are anyones guess, as would be the amount of lost traffic due to having a non-competitive policy.

Swap over for many will in reality start at 0%. If the Arabs can understand the rational for this then at least some Asian Nations might be expected to so, although, I have to say Japan is looking a bit recalcitrant at the moment. This example and others may be found of threads posted on DNlocal yesterday:

http://www.xn--ngbc4b8d.com/ar/index.php

sarcle
14th January 2007, 10:53 PM
Well I don't think it's going to take to long now. Vista is out on the 30th. Auto updates for IE7 Asia are in March and it looks like the Nintento Wii is using Opera which is IDN compatible. Got my first hit from it today.

http://www.idnforums.com/forums/8566-someone-just-hit-my-site-from-a-nintento-wii.html

touchring
15th January 2007, 01:40 AM
80% is an almost ludicrous figure. The last 20% would take years to convert and probably wouldn't spend anything anyway. The heaviest spenders are likely to be the early adopters, which if you take that strategy will almost certainly end up elsewhere!


Are we talking about critical mass in which webmasters will switch to IDNs?

Or are we just talking about the critical mass before the ASCII millionaires start to buy our names, and so we can offload them?

There is a difference. :)

Fka200
15th January 2007, 02:02 AM
Are we talking about critical mass in which webmasters will switch to IDNs?

Or are we just talking about the critical mass before the ASCII millionaires start to buy our names, and so we can offload them?

There is a difference. :)

I think the discussion may be about when the general public will be begin to use IE7 in higher percentages compared to IE6. I've been heavily promoting IE7 as much as I can, and I went from an average of 3% of IE7 to 10%. These figures will SURELY increase once Vista is released, and I'm very confident about that.

touchring
15th January 2007, 02:06 AM
I think the discussion may be about when the general public will be begin to use IE7 in higher percentages compared to IE6. I've been heavily promoting IE7 as much as I can, and I went from an average of 3% of IE7 to 10%. These figures will SURELY increase once Vista is released, and I'm very confident about that.


Ok, might be i misunderstood the subject, if it's about when the general public will begin to use IE7 in higher percentages.

I own 2 chinese sites myself - my company sites, but i wouldn't be promoting chinese names until at least 80% of users got IDN supported browsers. By promoting i mean showing it on the site, showing it on the namecards and company letterheads.

If this doesn't sound good to many of you, i'm sorry, i'm thinking from the point of view of my company interest when i say this, not frmo an IDNer perspective.

Rubber Duck
15th January 2007, 07:13 AM
Are we talking about critical mass in which webmasters will switch to IDNs?

Or are we just talking about the critical mass before the ASCII millionaires start to buy our names, and so we can offload them?

There is a difference. :)

No you were talking about Webmaster switching on traffic volumes by percentage so was I. The ASCII millionaire thing is totally different issue. They will buy when they have belief. If they wait until these domains have substantial traffic, even they won't be able to afford much.

Ok, might be i misunderstood the subject, if it's about when the general public will begin to use IE7 in higher percentages.

I own 2 chinese sites myself - my company sites, but i wouldn't be promoting chinese names until at least 80% of users got IDN supported browsers. By promoting i mean showing it on the site, showing it on the namecards and company letterheads.

If this doesn't sound good to many of you, i'm sorry, i'm thinking from the point of view of my company interest when i say this, not frmo an IDNer perspective.

I would seriously reconsider that situation. Browser with money will have moved on long before then. Companies will switch to IDN because they will realise that if they don't they won't have a business. Those that rely heavily of Search Ranking will have to move quickly. Those that rely on type-in have a little more time but once people get used to typing IDN they will get lazy on the ASCII. Ask yourself, how many people could be bothered to watch Black and White films once colour television was available?