BRICI may house 1.2 bn Net users by 2015

The Chinese spend more time on the internet doing a better variety of things than Indians. Brazil has a higher PC penetration than India, but there are more Indians surfing the internet than Brazilians. The cost of broadband internet access in the interiors of Russia is 2-3 times that of large cities, pulling down usage.

These, among other nuggets, is what a report released this week by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) says. ‘The Internet's New Billion - Digital Consumers in Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia’ (BRICI), tracks internet growth and usage in these countries.

Currently 45 per cent of the world’s population lives in BRICI countries, but it accounts for just about one-third of the total internet users. Thanks to macroeconomic factors, this number will double in the next five years to 1.2 billion, predicts the report.

It, however, doesn't manage to move beyond the obvious. Much of what the report says - that Indians use the net, largely, for job hunting and e-mail or that Russians use it for search — is stuff that is available on most research about the net. The value addition, if any, comes from two things.

One, the comparisons with the US and Japan. The Americans and Japanese use the net primarily to read news, watch video or play games. That explains why internet advertising is mammoth in those markets and why both newspapers and TV are losing audiences. The US clearly is the leader when it comes to using the net for all its possibilities. E-commerce and mobile banking usage are the highest in the US (see chart). Funnily enough social networking is not as popular in the US as it is in the BRICI countries, especially Indonesia.

The other value addition is from the nuggets on the dynamics of these markets. For instance, in Brazil, a highly urbanised country access costs are very high - about $27 a month, compared to say $5-15 in most markets including India. So, lower income youngsters in the cities or villages, go to neighbourhood LAN (local area network) houses to surf. These are what we know as internet cafes. They have 10-20 PCs and charge rates as low as $1 a hour. That is how the net is spreading in India, too.