Article Excerpt:
TWST: The consumer Internet space has certainly been exciting for a long time. Is there still a lot of interest?Mr. Chin: I think there's tremendous interest, and if you recall the pre-bubble period in 1996 and 1997, just as the Internet was starting, we were all drinking the Kool-Aid from an investor perspective as venture capitalists and we were looking at the numbers of Internet users. I remember reading all of the research reports from our friends on Wall Street saying that there'd be over 0.5 billion users by 2000 or 2002, and we all drank that Kool-Aid ' we invested heavily. During the bubble, we threw out those reports and laughed and said, 'Wow, we were foolish to believe those numbers.' Fast-forward to 2006. The statistics and numbers on worldwide Internet users is pretty impressive and I think worldwide Internet usage is at 1 billion users. So the people are on the Internet, the pipes are built, and now it's time for the services, the content, and the games to be delivered and, because of that large user base, you're seeing innovation at a very, very high pace.
TWST: As you point out there are 1 billion users. If we look at the
commerce side of this, how many are able to take advantage, either
through high-speed Internet or from an affordability point of view?
Mr. Chin: There are two things that need to take place. High-speed
Internet definitely helps, and the second thing is just the ability to
transact. There are countries where credit card processing is just in
the early stages. If you look at parts of India and parts of Asia, a lot
of the methods for transactions online are prepaid credit cards, whereas
in the US, Europe and Australia, you have an existing credit card
infrastructure and you have companies like PayPal that enable those
transactions. So there are two metrics you want to look at ' what's the
broadband penetration per country and where does the credit card
infrastructure lie. Usually, the level of broadband penetration
indicates the level of credit card penetration, so if you look at North
America, 68% of the population is on the Internet, and if you look at
Asia, it's down to 8% to 10%.
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