Double digit growth for UK internet economy

City AM yesterday (19th March) reports annual growth of 10.9% in the UK internet economy; to £121bn. Representing over twice the average for G20 countries at 8.35 of GDP.

According to Boston Consulting Group it would hit 12.4% GDP by 2016!

Chinese food for thought

McKinsey has produced a report: Understanding China's Digital Consumers a study of connected consumers, in which they describe segments uch as 'digital junkies,' 'mobile mavens' and 'info-centrics.'

McKinsey estimates that around 6 million people go online for the first time each month in China and, in their survey of 4,866 connected consumers, they found that typical respondents now spend 39.2 hours online each week, incorporating video, music, gaming, instant messaging and social networking.

'Digital junkies' spend 34.1 hours per week on new media devices such as laptops, MP3 players a e-readers and replace their mobile phones at least once a year; 'info-centrics' mainly use the web for search, information and e-mail, and 'mobile mavens' surf the net for a minimum of 14 hours per week mainly through wireless handsets.

McKinsey concludes that word-of-mouth is increasingly influential in China and, with an internet population predicted to grow from 420 million now to 750 million in 2015, that's a lot of words from a lot of mouths. I wonder what the Red Guards would have made of such democratic communication by the people, through the people, for the people?

Global connections

According to a report in WARC News today, Forrester are predicting an increase to the global online population of some 40% by 2014. They reckon it had already expanded from less than 1 billion individuals in 2005 to 1.6 billion in 2009 and will continue to grow to 2.3 billion individuals by 2014.

As you might expect, Forrester expect China and India to be key drivers of this expansion - with virtual retail mirroring the increase in physical outlets - but also Russia and Brazil.

Growth is good but we marketers must never forget that these are aggregated figures and each node, each login is made by an individual person, whether we call them netizens or not. Personalisation will surely be the key to converting more of them into online consumers but, simply by the laws of probability, the huge numbers involved suggest that online retail sales are about to go through the stratosphere.