Levels of Internet use set to rocket over next few years in Asia, Middle East and Africa- with implications for newspapers?

Posted by Christie Silk on July 22, 2009 at 3:21 PM

According to a new study conducted by Forrester Research, over the next few years around another 2.2 billion people will be connected to the Internet, representing an increase of 45%. Interestingly, by 2013, 43% of this figure will be located in Asia. Moreover, Africa and the Middle East, whilst currently totalling only 8% of the world's Internet users, will experience significant development in this period.

It is expected that Nigeria, Iran and Egypt will count as the greatest areas of development in the Africa-Middle East region. It will be interesting to see how the press of these nations, the nature of each obviously being inherently different, will develop with the proliferation of the Internet. The editor of Nigeria's Punch, for example, expressed the opinion that publishers must accept the inexorable rise of the Internet as a challenging opportunity for newspapers to develop and improve their services.

In 2008, the USA counted the highest number of Internet users, followed by China, Japan, Brazil, and Germany. Yet, by 2013, it is expected that the landscape will have altered so that China will be in first place, followed by the US, India, Japan, and Brazil. The current media dynamic in China is particularly complex, given the soaring use of the Internet as both a tool of dissidents and state enforcers, while the printed press remains entirely under government control.

The Indian press, on the other hand, is currently in the midst of a great printing boom, particularly with the propagation of local language dailes. This buoyancy, however, has been associated to the relatively retarded development of Internet networks into regions outside of the main towns, even though literacy levels are increasing continuously. The vast increase in Internet acces, as predicted by the report, is likely to present regional newspapers with competition, although there are indications that publishers in India, who have had the benefits of seeing the effects of digital migration happen first in other countries, are making preparations so that their titles embrace, rather than fear the phenomena.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor