Internet Economy to reach $4.2 Trillion by 2016

If you needed further proof that the internet is huge and growing, look no further than this report by the Boston Consulting Group.

The group predicts that the internet will generate $4.2 trillion in revenue by 2016, with roughly half of all the people in the world online. And while this sounds huge, it doesn’t seem completely unreasonable.

In 2010 the internet economy is believed to have been roughly $2.3 trillion. while it might seem a big jump to go from $2.3 trillion to $4.2 trillion in only a few years, the prediction is factoring in an explosion of new users. Internet access if finally beginning to become pervasive, and the Boston Consulting Group believes that the current 1.9 billion people number will balloon to 3 billion people on the internet. And with so many people online comes profit.

As huge as the numbers seem, they’re actually fairly conservative compared to some other predictions. Ericcson, a mobile phone company, predicted that we will see 5 billion mobile internet subscribers by 2016.

The Boston Consulting Group thinks we’ll see a shift from internet users coming mostly from rich nations to emerging markets. Already we have begun to see that shift. They go on to project that China will have 800 million internet users by 2016, while will be more than there are in the United States, France, Germany, India, Japan and the U.K. combined. So you might want to start practicing Mandarin.

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