China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has released a report on Internet development in China in 2008: Investigation Report on Internet in Rural Area. The number of people connected in rural areas reached 52.62 million by the end of last year, an annual increase rate of 127.7%, much higher than the 38.2% annual increase rate in cities.

There is an emerging force to drive the continuous growth of Internet in China. Investigation shows that 40% (29.17 million) of the 73 million new users come from rural areas.

However, the development gap of Internet between rural areas and cities is still great.

The prevalence rate of Internet in cities is 27.3%.
In rural areas 7.1%.
Reasons for this are:

The education and income level of residents in rural areas are relatively low
Lack of knowledge about computers and the Internet, 53.3%
Lack of equipment to access Internet, 23.1%
The average weekly use of Internet by rural areas users is 12.3 hours, 5.6 hours less than in cities.

A key project led by the government and driven by various parties to support the telecommunication and Internet in rural areas is underway.
Source: China Economic Net

Some facts on which to ponder:

China’s software sector generated RMB580 billion ($80.8 billion) in revenue in 2007, an annual increase of 20.8%.
Sales of software products surged 22.5% to RMB201.7 billion.
China’s phone subscribers, mobile and fixed line combined, are expected to grow by more than 60 million in 2008 to hit a total of 976 million, according to the Ministry of Information Industry.
China’s fixed-line and mobile phone subscribers will account for 27.1 percent and 46.4% of the population, respectively. The continuous falling of mobile communication charges has directly led to a sharp increase in mobile phone subscribers and some people even replaced their fixed-lines with mobile phones.
In 2007, China’s mobile phone subscribers increased by 86.22 million, while fixed-line subscribers fell by 2.33 million.
By the end of 2007, China had 370 million fixed-line subscribers and 530 million mobile subscribers. The two figures combined accounted for a fifth of the world’s total phone subscribers.
Some 99.5 percent of the country’s villages have access to telephone links, and the broadband connection reached 92% of the villages nationwide.
The number of Internet users in China passed 200 million in 2007, the China Internet Network Information Centre said in its semi-annual report on Internet use.
China’s Internet population stood at 210 million at the end of last year, up 53% from the same time in 2006 when there were 137 million. That figure puts China just 5 million users away from becoming the world’s largest wired nation — and with only about 16% of the population online. At its current growth rate, China will become the world’s top Internet market sometime in the next few months.
China’s most popular Internet application is online music, used by 86.6% of those surveyed, followed by instant messaging with 81%. E-mail placed only fifth, with 56.5%.
China’s information industry authority plans to expand broadband service to more than 95% of the nation’s villages in 2008.

David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based technology consultancy, said, ‘China’s admittedly impressive user statistics hide an important fact: only a fraction of those users have regular access to a PC.’ Most of them are using Internet cafes.
Source: PC World and Beijing 2008 and China.com

SonicWALL (the strange capitalization of the name is theirs), which provides continuous data protection and network, Web and email security programs, has opened a new research and development (R&D) center based in Shanghai’s Fudan Science Park.

In announcing it notes that this is to expand its global software development capabilities.

The center is close to Fudan University which gives it proximity and a special attraction to a talent pool of highly trained graduates.

This is more important than it might seem at first sight. High tech companies within striking distance of good universities attract a much higher than average percentage of the talent.

The center has already recruited graduates from nearby technology universities and at its opening the center had ten recent graduates as full-time employees. The company will continue to seek more talent throughout the year as its business grows.

In addition to development, quality assurance and automation for SonicWALL’s product, the center will also undertake localization and development for the Chinese market.

SonicWALL president and chief executive officer Matthew Medeiros said, ‘This new engineering facility is designed to help SonicWALL in its efforts to make web usage safer by strengthening its capabilities in the delivery of advanced solutions to evolving threats.’

According to Gartner Group research cybercrime has grown in profitability in the past six months, with average incomes from the malware economy reaching between $80,000 to $100,000 per year. SonicWALL spam and phishing statistics indicate that security threats have become more aggressive and more closely interlinked.

As this was written an email from a colleague at CER arrived with a severe warning attached to the top. Probably there is an increase in phishing and spam. Certainly there is an increase in programs designed to stop it. Sometimes, as in an email from a colleague, with odd results.
Source: World IT Report

Tencent, China’s leading Internet community operator and a Shenzhen-based company, said on its website that in contradiction to its name its net income jumped 16.2% year-on-year to RMB290 million ($37.5 million) in the first quarter of 2007.

Sales went up 19.8% from a year earlier to RMB773 million.

Tencent’s Ma Huateng, age 35, is an executive Director, Chairman of the Board and CEO of the company and better known as Pony Ma. He said internet value-added services rose 14.9% to RMB502 million on the back of strong activity through the winter vacation and the Spring Festival, .

The company has 598 million instant messaging accounts, 3% higher than the fourth quarter of last year. Even allowing for multiple accounts that startling statistic nevertheless represents almost one account for every two Chinese.

Tencent’s instant messaging tool QQ is a household word in China and rivals MSN Messenger in popularity among new net users.

The company, which went public in Hong Kong in 2004, said its advertising sales surged 77% year-on-year to RMB74 million.
Source: China View

In Asia SMS continues to be the message medium of choice against mobile e-mail challengers. A new study from Portio Research suggests the outlook for text messaging in the Asia-Pacific region is bright.

Portio analyst John White stated there will be estimated 1.4 billion additional mobile phone users in Asia by 2012, and SMS revenue in the region will mushroom from $16 billion in 2006, up to $22.7 billion in 2012. John White added that regional SMS traffic within the same period will spike sharply from 967.7 billion in 2006 to a staggering 2,071 billion messages by 2012.

Alex Chau, senior research manager at analyst house IDC, said, ‘SMS will remain the dominant peer-to-peer messaging service in Asia-Pacific, as IM will require the user to have ‘always-on’ services like GPRS or 3G.’
Source: Business Week

Students are prohibited from using difficult-to-understand Internet terms in their compositions during the national College Entrance Examination in 2007, or face mark deductions. That is the message delivered in the Outline for National College Entrance Examination. Internet terms refer to words and expressions that were created by online web surfers based on dialects or similarities in pronunciation.

A report on China web portal sina.com said a composition written by a middle school student in central China was rife with these intricate Internet terms, which are a fad among students, such as ‘GG’ (literally meaning elder brother), ‘Ou’ (I), ‘Sauce Purple’ (so) and ‘KPM’ ( a combo word of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and McDonalds).

Experts play down the use of Internet terms among students, a group that is considered to lack judgment and easily succumb to peer pressure. Director of the Linguistic Department at Huazhong Normal University in the central province of Hubei, Wu Zhenguo said students should be prudent while using Internet terms.

Committee Director of the China Association of Lexicography Zhou Mingjian said in a report from the official Xinhua News Agency that Internet terms cannot be used as formal expressions and students are discouraged from using them because once they are accustomed to it, it will be difficult to get rid of the habit.

The Law of the People’s Republic of China on the National Common Language and Characters, effective on March 1, 2006, states that news reports, government documents and textbooks will be labeled illegal if they use terms such as ‘MM’ (beautiful girls), ‘Dinosaur’ (ugly girls), ‘PK’ (means face-to-face duel) and ‘bean vermicelli’ (fans).
Source: China.org.cn