By virtue of her huge population, Asia offers massive internet growth potential not only from PC users, but also through the pervasive influence of an unprecedented number of cell phone subscribers.

China obviously takes the lead with more than 580 million wireless subscribers while India has overtaken the USA which has about 255 million cell phone users. India, the world’s fastest growing mobile market, is enjoying a blistering rate of growth with 270 million wireless subscribers accounting for 23% mobile subscriber rate. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) reported that 8.2 million mobile users were added in April and total number is up 57% from a year ago.

What is interesting is that according to TRAI, while there are 9 million broadband and dialup internet connections in India, more than 38 million users connect to the Web using their mobile phones. This means that the number of people using their mobile devices to go online is now over 4 times those using a PC, as wireless take-up is primarily affected by ease of access due to landline limitations especially in rural areas.

Take Thailand, which currently has 53 million wireless subscribers. AIS – the largest Thai mobile operator, said surging mobile internet demand in Thailand enjoyed a 50% increase in usage volume and value in the first 3 months of 2008. AIS, with an estimated 50% market share, reported a 70% increase in data revenue to 300 million baht and mobile internet usage more than doubled, with customers from Bangkok accounting for 40%. AIS expects this trend to continue and mobile internet usage to grow more than 100% this year (source: The Bangkok Post).

To follow up on my previous entry, accelerating ecommerce take-up in Asia would necessitate increasing the reach of either PCs and/or wireless mobile devices, facilitating greater access to internet services and making these products affordable for more people with less purchasing power.

Market growth will also be driven in part by the increasing appeal of low-cost ultra portable laptops as even established players HP, Acer, Dell etc. are jumping on the UMPC bandwagon. Mainstream consumers, especially in emerging markets, are also gradually adopting these compact notebooks due to the attractive pricing and recent technology improvements, a good example of which is the newly launched Asus EeePC 901 (“The Mini-Laptop Changing the Game“, Businessweek).