Rural netizens play games 2.8 hours a week, and the market potential is exploding
Gao Jing, 28, lives in Beijing and spends almost all her time on the internet. She works online during office hours, posts on Weibo on her commute, shops on Taobao during her lunch break, and watches American TV series on Sohu Video in the evening. Her annual income is about 100,000 yuan, and around 60% of her spending is done through the internet.
Feng Tao, a young farmer who lives in Shuangliu, Chengdu, has an annual income of about 40,000 yuan. He has a computer and a 2G mobile phone, and treats the internet as his main form of entertainment. Most of his time online is spent playing games and watching movies and videos, and he occasionally uses his computer and phone to browse the news. Only 10% of his spending takes place online, mainly payments for online games and Taobao.
These are true portraits of the lives of netizens in two different Chinese cities.
"A comparison of the two cases makes it easy to see that urban residents are already highly internet-connected and the internet market there is becoming saturated, while the rural market, whose main force is young rural people like Feng Tao, is exploding with considerable potential," Zhou Yuan, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group, told reporters.
According to the report "China's Digital New Generation 3.0" released yesterday by Boston Consulting Group, by 2015 China will gain nearly 200 million more internet users, bringing the total to 700 million, almost twice the combined number of users in the United States and Japan; and the driving force behind this growth will come largely from people aged 51 and above and from rural residents. Among them, from 2011 to 2015, rural Chinese residents will contribute more than one-third of China's internet growth.
This coincides with the results of an earlier survey of China's rural areas by Ericsson ConsumerLab: 41% of rural respondents said that being able to access the internet anytime and anywhere is very important. At present in rural areas, fixed-line telephone ownership has fallen to 46%, while mobile phone ownership has risen to 90%. Household computer ownership stands at 31%, and 16% of rural respondents said they plan to buy a computer within the next 12 months. Nowadays, individual forms of entertainment such as going online with a computer and chatting on a mobile phone are becoming scenes from the daily lives of some rural residents.
"The rural market accounts for 26% of internet users and 22% of time spent online. For this market segment, which has not yet received the same level of attention as urban groups and young groups, these figures are quite considerable," said Christoph Nettesheim, a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group.
Unlike urban netizens, rural netizens are characterized by lower levels of education and income, and their main motivation for going online is entertainment needs, such as watching videos, online games and online chatting.
Zhou Yuan pointed out that although rural netizens generally use the internet relatively less, their average of 3 hours a day online cannot be ignored. That is because the internet gives them access to products and services they cannot reach by other means. For example, they like shopping online, and they spend almost more time on online games than any other group, averaging about 2.8 hours a week.
Especially in micro-payment areas such as online games, Zhou Yuan said, rural netizens are even more willing to pay than urban netizens.
Feng Tao spends more than 70 yuan a month on online games. However, one of his complaints about the internet is its speed. He has recently become hooked on smartphones, and a major reason is that smartphones can provide a better mobile internet experience.
Zhou Yuan believes that while rural netizens are growing rapidly, another phenomenon worth watching is that more and more farmers have started or are starting businesses through the internet. For example, online sales revenue in Shaji Town, Jiangsu, reached 500 million last year, while the cashmere industry in Qinghe Donggaozhuang, Hebei, developed on the basis of local resources, and online tea sales in Anxi, Fujian, have also been developing impressively.
However, Zhou Yuan also pointed out that compared with the optimistic picture of rapid growth among rural netizens, there are far fewer excellent internet services aimed at the rural market, and some supporting infrastructure has not kept up. In the long run, these will all be markets with potential.