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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

This. India is a billion people and maybe 10-20% have internet access. Of those 10-20%, the vast majority do NOT have $20k to spend ($20k is the average consumption level of the poorest Americans). China and the Philippines are certainly richer, but not drastically so.

Rough numbers: USA is a $16T economy, most of which is on the internet. China is an $8T economy, most of which is not. India is $1.8T.

There is certainly opportunity here, particularly in the long term (probably why Facebook bought them), which is why I'm in India introducing people to BayesianWitch. But be realistic about the market.

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The EU is a $16.5T economy, most of it on the internet, vastly underserved by internet companies compared to the U.S. Even Facebook was English only until 2008. Big business opportunities are being missed there.

The smorgasbord of languages and cultures makes it harder to target though. But German, French and Spanish markets are big in their own right, especially if you consider you can reach other territories with them as well. (Austria, Switzerland and to some extent eastern Europe with German; Canada and much of connected Africa with French; Phillipines and Latin America with Spanish.)

I have to congratulate you for including Canada in the "Francophonie".

Usually people equate the French speaking world with France,Switzerland and Belgium.

Which is surprising since Canada has almost 7 million French speakers.

you find that people often omit large swathes of Africa and parts of the Caribbean?

that's a bit depressing, given the importance of colonialism in those areas.

You won't find many Spanish speakers among the younger generation in the Philippines, and that's your target market. You'd be better off using English or Taglish for the Philippines.

And most of the most appealing-to-business sub-populations in a lot of these countries read english well enough that an English-language product captures a lot of them.

Please, the EU is made up of individual countries with individual languages with individual histories and cultures. Comparing it to the US is ridiculous.

Internet penetration in India is at the lower end of your estimate - 124 million in 2012 (1).

In contrast, the wireless subscriber base was 875 million in 2013 (2).

Source: 1. “Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia's Next Superpower” by McKinsey; Published 2013 2. TRAI: Highlights on Telecom Subscription Data as on 31st October, 2013

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