Chilean Tech Trends

I am in Chile, visiting some business partners while I visit my dad who is undergoing some Chemo treatment.

I have had the opportunity to meet with some very smart Chilean executives and they have shared some interest insights on doing business in Chile.

One interesting comment was from the head of a large company, after we had coffee was that Chilean Ad Agencies are way behind the curve when it comes to developing digital companies targeting Gen Y's.

We agreed to catch-up over a few beers next and discuss some trends in community marketing that I have picked up from working in NYC.

The Latin American Market 2.0

I was reading a blog on the Mexican Internet market posted by Joseph Jaffe on Crayonville's blog.

He wrote:-

"20% of the population is online and a staggering 70% of this group are broadband enabled.

Furthermore, Latin American leads broadband subscriber growth in 2005 vs 2004 with a whopping 70.7%. Next highest is Western Europe with 42.2% (source: eMarketer)"

It reminded me of a report I put together late last year on the Latin American Market (not to be confused by the US Hispanic Market) and my findings support the blog:-

"Latin American market is the fastest growing market of Internet users comprising a total population of 553,908,632 and an Internet Penetration of 76,437,188 users, which has been largely neglected by many English speaking Internet firms.

While only 14.40% of the Central and Latin American population has access to the Internet in comparison to Oceania/Australia which has 52.06% penetration, this figure represents 8.50% of the global Internet Population versus the 0.50% for Oceania/Australia." (Source: Web 2.0, The Central and Latin America Market Opportunity, Chile – The Latin Tiger)

email me for a free copy of the report: billy at metrixdigital.com