Chinese on the web has become the most

Consulting agency BDA announced last Thursday that China came out on top in the world in the number of users connected to the Network. The company, earning on the knowledge of oriental specifics, in this statement is based on the March report ( PDF , 490 Kb) of the governmental information center CNNIC , which says that at the end of 2007 the "sturgeon" population of China was 210 million. The growth rate of Internet users amounted to 53.3% per annum, and at the time of publication of the report on March 6, CNNIC was talking about 215 million subscribers. Thus, BDA analysts simply extrapolated numbers based on growth rates and came to the conclusion that the United States, with their 216 million subscribers (according to Nielsen / NetRatings), moved into second place.

Citing data on the turnover of the online advertising and online gaming market of the Middle Kingdom, the BDA notes that they are still far from impressive compared to the United States. In addition, the depth of Internet penetration in China is still less than the world average of 19% (216 million people - this is only 16% of the country's population). However, the company sees the most promising prospects and expects that the Internet industry in China will soon truly “shoot”. Although it was not worthwhile to expect a different opinion from her, vitally interested in attracting investors to China (and therefore customers to her).

In addition, there is one big mystery throughout this story: why does the abbreviation from the name of the China Internet Network Information Center look like CNNIC?