Asia-Pacific: A Regional Overview.

Start here and follow the trail...

[Woz]

Asia-Pacific Overview
Last Update			20th March 2001
World Population:			6,067,000,000
Region Population:			3,604,927,789
% Region Population of World Population:			59.42%
World Online Population:			407,100,000
Region Online Population:			105,401,520			Q4 2000
% Region Online of World Online:			25.89%
% Region Online of World Population:			1.74%
Asia-Pacific Online Growth:			about 45%			over the last three years as new countries come on line
Native languages:			??
			Too many to count! The main languages seem to be English, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Russian, Philippino, and Indian, not necessarily in that order, with 100s of lesser spoken languages and dialects. This is my opinion of course and open to conjecture.
Understanding of English:			10-15% ?
			my (un) educated guess? Total English pages is 25% so may be a little room to move here.
Active Domains:			???			Still trying to collect information for this.
No of search engines:			1			Q4 2000
No of national directories:			0			Q4 2000
Regional Demographics
	Population	% of A-P	Online Population	% of Population
Totals	3,604,927,789		111,001,520	42.29%
Central Asia	148,591,409	4.12%	191,500	0.13%
Middle East	78,482,159	2.18%	2,303,020	2.93%
South Asia	1,330,999,207	36.92%	5,802,500	0.44%
East Asia	1,489,499,318	41.32%	87,403,000	5.87%
South East Asia	526,176,693	14.60%	5,354,500	1.02%
Pacific	31,179,003	0.86%	9,947,000	31.90%
...
Online Demographics
	Active Domains	Total Pages in Domain	Pages in Native Language	% of Total	Pages in English	% of Total	Total SEs	Total Dirs
Totals	?	62,968,650	37,902,002	60.19%	16,085,484	25.55%	?	?
Central Asia	?	255,899	?	0.00%	65,259	25.50%	?	?
Middle East	?	1,103,796	376,282	34.09%	480,678	43.55%	?	?
South Asia	?	306,798	?	0.00%	270,407	88.14%	?	?
East Asia	?	49,949,231	36,720,618	73.52%	6,328,307	12.67%	?	?
South East Asia	?	2,528,054	749,775	29.66%	1,427,146	56.45%	?	?
Pacific	?	8,824,872	55,327	0.63%	7,513,687	85.14%	?	?

   

There are a lot of unknowns in these figures, particularly the number of active domains in each CCTLD, and also the accuracy of the "pages in" figures. For example, with the globalisation of the Tongan (.to) and Tuvaluan (.tv) domains, any figures in the local language really go right out the window.

Please click on the Sub-Region Names above for the country information in that region.

To make things easier for all our members and lurkers, Please keep discussions in this thread to the overview of the region as a whole, discussions for the sub-regions should be in those threads, and country discussions in the country specific threads as they come online. Any help you can give with figures or search engines and directories will be appreciated and input into the overviews. Many thanks for your cooperation.

World Population figures from PRB.org. Country Population Figures from CIA World Figures. Online Population Figures from NUA Surveys. All "Pages in" figures from FAST. N.B. page in native language are for the official language if not English.

Onya Woz.

[Rumbas]

I need some info on Arabic language SE's.

So far I've gathered these:

[arab.net...]
[iransearch.com...]
[arabia.com...]
[arab.de...]

Anybody have additional info - most used?

TIA :)

[chiyo]

Thanks Woz, this is a great overview.. Those who ignore the region and have an international market are living in the past. As far as online growth is concerned the Asia Pacific will overtake the Americas and Europe in less than a decade.

[Eric_Jarvis]

assuming you don't require specific countries, the referrals to our Arabic site come from

www.ayna.com
bafree.com
www.ajeeb.com
www.naseej.com
cc.emirates.net.ae

also a large number of smaller sites that each generate minimal traffic and are mostly specialist...and MSN

Ayna is our biggest source of Arabic traffic

it is my understanding that Iranians mostly speak Pharsi which, though similar, is a different language to Arabic in much the same way that Danish is a different language to English (Iranian ex-gf...and I was brought up in Bahrain...so I'm pretty confident that's the case)

there are some regional SEs at [searchenginecolossus.com...] but it's very much a leap in the dark with those

[Rumbas]

Thanks Eric

Now I have a place to start. I'm pretty much in the dark but I surely agree that the Asian Pacific will become very important.

Nice work Woz, the regional overview is great :)

[rencke]

Is there a standardized way to transcribe Arabic letters into Roman?

[Eric_Jarvis]

as in write untranslated Arabic words in the Latin alphabet?...I don't believe so...it seems to vary throughout the Arab world

[sugarkane]

Although Arabic varies greatly - the different dialects can be as different as Spanish to Italian - if you transliterate¹ using the Egyptian phonetics you'll be closest to a 'standard'.

Egypt produces much of the region's TV shows etc and the dialect is widely understood. I've seen a transliteration table somewhere, but I can't find it now...

You could also go for Classical Arabic, but this is very formal and not widely used outside of religious and official circles.

¹ my big word of the day