As Taiwanese Internet companies look across the strait for their economic holy grail, data released last week shows considerable differences in surfing patterns between Taiwanese and Chinese.
A recent survey conducted by Internet research company Interactive Audience Measurement Asia (Iamasia) shows that while Taiwan's 6.5 million Web surfers have diversified surfing habits, China's 15 million Internet users stick mostly to portal sites. An Internet portal is a general purpose Web site with a range of resources that acts as a starting point for finding information or surfing on the Internet.
According to Iamasia, personal homepage site geocities.com, community site taconet.com.tw, domain name host site v3.com and the home page of ISP Hinet are vertical sites which rank among Taiwan's top 10 most-visited sites.
By contrast, Iamasia's figures indicate that the home page of ISP 263.net is the only non-portal site to rank among China's Top 10 most visited sites. According to Iamasia, this situation closely mirrors the situation seen during the early days of Taiwan's Internet market development and may well change over time.
The survey, conducted during December, also reiterated an increasingly apparent fact, that Chinese users prefer local sites and local content. Of the top 15 sites, only two -- Microsoft.com and yahoo.com -- are foreign.
Perhaps more telling for Taiwanese Net companies looking to expand abroad is the fact that none of Taiwan's leading portals, Kimo, Yam and PChome, made it into the top 15 most visited sites in China. Beijing-based Sina.com heads the China list with its Chinese site sina.com.cn, while its Taiwan site, sina.com.tw, also fares well. US-based Yahoo and Microsoft rank among the top 10 in both China and Taiwan.
According to one analyst who closely follows the greater China Internet market, the dearth of Taiwanese sites in China is not so surprising when viewed from outside of Taiwan.
"Taiwan and China share the same language, that's true, but their cultures and preferences are very different," he said on condition of anonymity.
According to data from Iamasia, Chinese net surfers are more loyal and patriotic than their Taiwanese counterparts, making it tough for any other site to capture surfers' attention.
The analyst noted Yahoo's acquisition of Kimo as a case study in cross-strait Internet development.
"Yahoo will want to use Kimo to help their China plans, but Kimo is not so well known there," he said. "They can make it successful, but they will have to understand that being a big multinational, or even a popular Taiwanese site, will not work in China."
Figures from Iamasia illustrate this point: the top three sites in China -- Sina, 163.com and Sohu -- all recorded a home-audience reach of 47 to 50 percent in December. Fourth-ranked Microsoft was 20 percentage-points behind on 26 percent, giving it a very large task if it hopes to catch up.
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