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Tag Archives: BRIC

Breakout Years in Adoption of Communications Technologies in BRIC Countries

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

Here’s a brilliant TED presentation by Hans Rosling on how to look differently at development indicators across countries and continents, using Gapminder’s trend visualization tool Trendalyzer –

I spent an hour playing around with Gapmindmer and discovered some interesting trends related to the diffusion of communications technologies in BRIC countries.

In all these charts comparing Brazil, Russia, India, China and United States, the X axis represents the income per person (in fixed PPP$) on a logarithmic scale while the Y axis changes. By pressing the ‘play’ button, you can see how the variable changes for these five countries over years.

Let’s start with the Y axis representing the number of cell phones users on a logarithmic scale. It’s fascinating how each country seems to stay close to the X axis until something happens and it rises vertically. It happens to the USA in 1980, China in 1986, Brazil in 1989, Russia in 1990 and India in 1994. As of now, these five countries have the biggest cell phone user bases across the world¹ (China at #1 with 601 million, India at #2 with 305 million, USA at #3 with 260 million, Russia at #4 with 172 million and Brazil at #5 with 135 million).

Filed in Flat or Not, Technology | Also tagged Brazil, Breakout Years, Broadband, Cell Phone, China, Communications Technologies, Gapminder, Graphs, Hans Rosling, India, Internet, Logarithmic Scales, Personal Computer, Russia, TED, Trendalyzer, Trends, United States | Permalink | Comments (0)

How International Values Shape Communications Technologies Podcast - Episode 1

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

(Cross-posted at my fellowship blog — How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

In the introductory episode of our weekly fellowship podcast, Ben, Pavneet and I explain why our research on social media in BRIC countries is uniquely interdisciplinary, share the personal biases with which we are approaching our research, summarize what we have learned so far, and share our plans for the rest of the year.

The starting point of our research is to understand how differences in culture, access and language in BRIC countries impact the three core values of social media usage — collaboration, community and user generated content — across tools and devices. Pavneet’s focus is on the community and he explores two really important use cases for social media — consumer advocacy and civic engagement. Ben’s focus is on the individual and he explores issues of identity and privacy in the context of social media usage. My role is to pull it all together into a meaningful framework.

So, our research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world. But, beyond that, it’s really rooted in the tradition of cultural studies and borrows heavily from research related to business, government and development.

Filed in BRIC, GU-ISD Fellowship, podcasts | Also tagged Ben Turner, Communications Technologies, ICT4D, International Values, Pavneet Singh, Podcast, Social Media, Tech Policy, Web-2.0, Yahoo! Fellowship | Permalink | Comments (0)

BRIC Countries Early Adopters of Cloud Computing? No!

Monday, September 15th, 2008

This riff on how BRIC countries will adopt cloud computing is triggered off by Ben’s post on cloud computing at our official fellowship blog.

JP Morgan analyst Tarry Singh has been speculating (based on search data from Google) that BRIC countries, esp. India, will be early adopters of cloud computing. However, the high interest in cloud computing in India is surely driven by IT vendors and not end users. You can see a similar skew, especially for India, on searches on “social media”, which is again driven by IT vendors instead of end users.

I can imagine IT companies in India being early adopters of cloud computing because of high familiarity and low cost. However, I can’t imagine mainstream businesses or individual users in India (or Brazil/ Russia/ China) adopting cloud computing anytime soon because internet access in these countries is far from ubiquitous. Even the much higher penetration of mobile phones in BRIC countries won’t drive cloud computing because most of these mobile phones still don’t have data access.

So, search volumes apart, cloud computing is still far from the ground realities in BRIC countries.

Filed in BRIC | Also tagged Brazil, China, Cloud Computing, Google Insights, India, Russia, Tarry Singh | Permalink | Comments (1)

Check Out the Excellent Handbook of Online China Report from TrendsSpotting

Monday, August 25th, 2008

The excellent Handbook of Online China report prepared by Taly Weiss and Apurba Sen at TrendsSpotting (via China Web 2.0 Review) is the single most useful resource on web usage in China I have found so far in all my research on BRIC web usage –

Handbook of Online China

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web trend trends)

Here are some of the highlights from the report –

– China is the country with the highest internet user base (253 mn) in spite of its relatively low internet penetration (19.1%). Incidentally, China is also the country with the highest mobile subscriber base (595 mn).

– Chinese internet users spend significantly more time on all types of social media sites — especially BBS sites — than the global average.

– Local Chinese language players dominate the Chinese online space across categories.

– Internet censorship is very common in China but 85% of Chinese citizens approve internet censorship .

Other useful resources on the Chinese online space include the China Web Research group on SlideShare and the ReadWriteWeb report on the top web apps in China.

Filed in BRIC | Also tagged Apurba Sen, China, Handbook of Online China, SlideShare, Taly Weiss, TrendsSpotting | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gaming and Entertainment Drive Mobile Internet Usage in BRIC Countries

Monday, August 18th, 2008

According to the recent Mobile Media Marketplace report from the Nielson Company (via Ashish Sinha), gaming and entertainment are the most popular categories amongst mobile internet users in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) whereas email, weather, news, and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile Internet users.

Jeff Herrmann, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen, suggests that –

In the U.S. and Europe, broad access to media and entertainment has been available for decades through a large fixed distribution infrastructure, and more recently in specialized devices like iPods, to meet consumer’s entertainment needs. Users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India, and China markets haven’t had the benefit of broad-based content distribution thereby limiting their exposure, and are filling the service gap by embracing mobile’s transition into a personal entertainment platform.

Mobile internet penetration in BRIC countries continues to lag US/ EU (10% to 16%). Still, Russia at 11.2% and China at 6.8% are far ahead of Brazil at 2.6% and India at 1.8%.

It’s interesting to note that India is the only country where neither search or news figure in the top 5 usages of mobile web. It’s equally interesting to note that China is the only country where e-mail doesn’t figure in the top five mobile web usage list.

Filed in BRIC, Mobile Web | Also tagged Brazil, China, India, Mobile Internet, Mobile Media Marketplace, Mobile Web, Nielsen, Russia | Permalink | Comments (2)

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