India News Online To Catch Up With Rest Of The World

By Author: Herman Willson
Total Articles: 97
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According to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), more than half of the population among its 34 member countries gets their news online. South Korea probably has one of the highest ratios in terms of online readership as nearly 8 in 10 residents access their news through their favorite websites. Sadly, India is still far behind with only around 12% of the population has access to the Internet.

In India, print is still king as proven by its expanding advertising market share even as the rest of the world is suffering from the dearth of interest on print. The print industry, for example, suffered revenue loss of around $2.46 billion. In the United States alone, there was a 40% drop in employment in the print industry in the last decade as more and more newspapers are belt tightening just to keep their heads above water. In contrast, the number of companies offering news online opened a new type of revenue stream by recording $1 billion in revenues between 2005 and 2010.

Meanwhile, India’s newspaper industry remains robust. In fact, it bucks all the worldwide trends of the print industry. ...
... In 2013, the industry is expected to grow to INR246 billion compared to INR174 billion in 2010. What accounts for this growth? Generally, the problem with digital news sites is the Internet penetration remains low and newspapers remain cheap.

For now, websites in India publishing news online play a complementing role with the newspapers. For example, if the consumer wants to read today’s breaking news, he or she will log on to the site. Otherwise, he or she just opens a newspaper. But the onus is still with the websites to improve their services. One unique characteristic of India is that it has more than 20 official languages. If the digital site will only offer English, it might turn off the other readers. The website should not only be accurate with facts but also has the versatility to cater to both English and Hindi readers as well.

The OECD, meanwhile, predicts that the percentage of people who will exclusively get their news online can only increase. As the novelty of accessing news on the Internet as well as get today’s breaking news immediately rather than wait for tomorrow’s edition dissipates. When reading online becomes second nature, people’s attitude toward it will also change. Even with the present digital infrastructure problems in India, some websites have already paved the way for others to follow.

Author’s Bio:

Author is an expert with many years of corporate experience. He has written many articles for online publication, now he is providing information on the availability of today breaking news and latest news online.