China’s mobile Internet users may more than double within five years as smartphones that can browse the Web and download music become more affordable, said Lee Kai-fu (李開復), the former head of Google Inc’s China division.
The number of people accessing the Internet on their mobile devices in China may grow to 800 million within three to five years, from about 300 million now, Lee said in an interview yesterday at the Beijing headquarters of Innovation Works (創新工廠), the technology business incubator he set up after leaving Google.
Lee’s company is investing in a mobile-software maker and 11 other businesses in the country to benefit from booming demand for Web technology.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), the nation’s biggest maker of personal computers, expects products aimed at the mobile Internet market may comprise as much as 20 percent of the company’s sales in five years, president Rory Read said in April.
“It’s beginning to really take off,” Lee, 48, said of the nation’s mobile Internet market. “Everyone is starting out, figuring out how things will go. That’s exactly the right time when we want to get engaged.”
As 83 percent of mobile Internet users in China are aged about 29 years or younger, they don’t have a lot of money and are very sensitive to handset prices, Lee said.
Smartphones must be priced lower than 2,000 yuan (US$295), or less than half the current cost of more than 4,000 yuan, to be affordable, he said.
The price of a smartphone running Google’s Android system is likely to drop to about 1,500 yuan this year and 750 yuan next year, making such devices affordable to more people, Lee said.
Innovation Works raised US$115 million to invest in startups firms, and eight of the 12 firms the company has funded so far are in the mobile Internet business, he said.
Innovation Works, which received funding from WI Harper Group and Foxconn International Holdings Ltd (富士康), invests between US$15,000 and US$2.5 million in new businesses and supports them by providing access to technology-industry expertise, Lee said.
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