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Developing World Is a Profit Sink For Web Companies
The NYTimes is running a piece on the dilemma faced by Web entrepreneurs, particularly in social media companies: the developing world is spiking traffic but not contributing much to revenues. The basic disconnect when Web 2.0 business models meet Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East is that countries there are not good prospects for the advertisers who pay the bills. "Call it the International Paradox. Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results. ... Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there. 'I believe in free, open communications,' Dmitry Shapiro, the company's chief executive, said. 'But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it's very difficult to derive revenue from it.' ... Perhaps no company is more in the grip of the international paradox than YouTube, which [an analyst] recently estimated could lose $470 million in 2009, in part because of the high cost of delivering billions of videos each month."
Well, that explains part of the reason why online videos are really only available legally (e.g. hulu, veoh, etc) in the U.S. But I still think that they could easily make money on advertising by offering the same videos that are in the U.S. to countries like Canada, the U.K., most of Europe, Japan, etc,...
I was wondering from a long time whey videos on the BBC site cannot be accessed from here in India. Is this the reason?
Yes, this is a very difficult thing to overcome with providing content--especially high bandwidth content like video.
But maybe the third world should be looked at more like consumers with a lot of time and little money? I know it's horribly ridiculous for me to think that I work more than a poor Chinese man working 15 hours a day because I don't. But if you want to think of it as a viable market, these people have time to offer a business. So the obstacle becomes not how we can get them to click on our Amazon.com link and buy overpriced shoes like we do with fatass Americans (calm down, I am one)? But instead how can we ask them to perform some very menial task on the computer with a reward of our services?
So maybe your company would like image or video corpora tagged with words in a different language and background of a different culture? Those are becoming more of an asset. Or perhaps you want to boost a wiki in a particular language? Or perhaps you could offer premiums on translations and bother to attempt teach them a second language through cheap software? Ontology building services? Or treating each small region as a zone by population and blocking IPs until someone or some team completes rent-a-coder like challenges? Then you could host their name(s) on sites where people now have access as a kind of local hero style recognition? I mean, there are a number of things you could do with simple peer review that would keep a steady income of services which equate to time from these people. Some are more realistic than others. Who knows, you could inadvertently better their lives by doing some of the above?
My work here is dung.
The obvious answer is to distribute videos and other bandwidth-heavy content through a peer-to-peer mechanism such as Bittorrent. Then the users themselves take care of providing your extra server capacity. I guess it just needs a Bittorrent client written in Flash (ugh), or else built into the browser, with the site's main server acting as the first seed for each file.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I don't see the dilemma here, we are talking about companies that are in the business of trying to make money. If it is prohibitively expensive / unprofitable for them to supply video to Africa they should stop doing it. Of course there might be a good business reason to do something that incurs a loss for a while but I don't think anyone would bank on Africa suddenly becoming a profitable area of the world for anyone but diamond miners.
I don't want to argue for rampant capitalism but we need to get a grip and realize that services cost money to provide and unless the consumers are willing to pay (in one way or another) they will probably have to go without.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
You don't need to be a web2.0 savant to figure out that rampart bandwidth expenses combined with meek advertisement (YouTube) could lead to loses.
But hey, some consider this turf and establishment price. Google sure can afford it.
It's not as if this is anything specific to the developing world. The model for the dotcom 1.0 boom was "get the users now, figure out how to make a profit from them later". Now it just so happens that with Web 2.0 the new users are in developing countries, but the problem is the same - do you try and serve all these users in the hope that some day they might become profitable, or do you say that if you can't see a way to realize profit from them near term, then cut them loose. We all know how dotbomb 1.0 turned out, so the answer is pretty clear. The likes of google can cross-subsidize the poor, but less well-funded businesses should face up to the economic realities and not continue to pour money into users that will likely never be profitable for them - by the time these users might become profitable, they'll probably have moved on to other services anyway.
Oh no... it's the future.
Yes, I know.. it costs money.
But I just started thinking Internet is getting amazing again. The fact that I can stream a political discussion from the U.S. or access free e-books from Europe here in Hong Kong is AMAZING.
How can we resolve the money issue without breaking this? I feel people around the world have never had a chance like today to bridge misunderstandings. Up until 2 years ago the only understanding of Western world one could have far away was:
- Hollywood (or other typically fictional) movies
- Expensive imported books (sometimes requiring a language skill level not easily attained abroad)
I was wondering from a long time whey videos on the BBC site cannot be accessed from here in India.
15 August 1947 is the reason.
P2P a la bittorrent is the only way to feed the world with vidéos. Period.
Companies like Youtube are making revenues that will not last : they occupy a temporary niche that will disappear sooner or later. Let's just hope they won't cling to their model like the **AA did.
More broadcasting power to the people ! Call for a symmetrical up/down connectivity !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
i run several large sites, all are very popular in south america, south east asia and middle east
but the bandwidth bills are huge as is in gigabits/s
what we started doing is capping speeds during peak hours to these places simply because not enough money is being made from sales and advertising to pay for it
i know net neutrality people say thats wrong but were not a charity and have to pay alot to carriers :(
So what's preventing advertising companies to have global or localized ads, depending where the user lives?
I know Google does it, but all the other ads I see in Czech republic on the US pages are very local to America (companies/services I don't know).
Google "SOPCAST" and "p2p tv" and you will find a significant number of sites that provide live p2p video streaming. Basically while you download from someone, you upload to someone else at the same time. This is widely used for sports matches and other tv that is better enjoyed live than with an old-school torrent.
Was that so hard? ^^
(Yes, I know that people expect everything to be free. But hey, if it's worth it, people will pay. [But that is a huge if.])
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Perhaps no company is more in the grip of the international paradox than YouTube, which [an analyst] recently estimated could lose $470 million in 2009, in part because of the high cost of delivering billions of videos each month.
We just can't let this happen. Youtube is too big to fail. Just think of the impact it would have on the economy.
We must support them with a government bailout.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
I seriously doubt a million videos of skaters doing faceplants, idiots who just THINK they can sing, and comedy bits devoid of any actual comedy are going to improve our image in the world.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
or need it to get the government contract.
Either pay the developed world to do the work, or swap free video access to the developing world for it.
Anybody who did not understand that, has to.
Simple as that.
If these markets are leeching, and somebody does not see a viable interest it does not mean that there is no market to be used. It happens again and again, and it will happen until somebody does not pick up his behind and think of some way of using such potential. No meter how small it is.
And then in couple years, You will see another Google coming up. Or maybe the same Google occupying another market and thriving with it.
That is not easy, because it requires a change of mind and business.
Ok. I am south american and I have worked for years both in the computer industry and as a social worker. Now let me see if I am getting this straight: You are telling me that some web 2.0 companies can't make a profit from developing countries while cellphone companies sell millions and millions of shiny new cellphones and cellphones lines to poor people? And you tell me it is not the companies' fault? Mmmmm... I may be wrong, but could it be that sitting there in their air conditioned offices is not getting them a clear picture on how to make businesses in different cultures?
;)
PS: By the way, I haven't found an English translation for this, but we are not "poor people" but "personas en situaciÃn de pobreza". Hope you do get the difference there
Going way off on a tangent here, into a "solution" which probably isn't really practical, but which would be cool if it worked.
'But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it's very difficult to derive revenue from it.'
Is there a subset of content which could increase the ability to derive revenue from those countries? If we selected a subset, it would reduce the cost to deliver it. If it was content that increased the ability to derive revenue, it would pay for itself in the long run.
But what am I talking about? Content that increases the ability to derive revenue through advertising? Well, basically, I'm thinking of some TED Talks that have extraordinary ideas for increasing sustainable economic growth in third world countries. What if these companies, who know how to deliver content, focused on content like "how to convert cow dung into fuel pellets", "sustainable yield agriculture in equatorial climates", or "scrap metal Stirling engines". Even if the viewers (those who have access to computers) didn't use the knowledge for themselves, they might develop a hacker ethic to help bring up the rural areas of their country. Increased productivity at the edges lifts the whole country.
For the target countries, it gives them something to watch instead of just building resentment. For the content companies, it is a very long-term approach to developing new markets of the future.
Just spitballing. Any thoughts?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Having lived for more than 2 decades in third world countries, there is more going on than you may think.
It is true that may people in developing countries do not have the funds to pay, which is why the advertisers are getting upset. However, in my opinion the biggest problem is that even when you have the funds to pay, you can't find anyone who will accept your money.
For example, how many online stores only accept Credit/Debit Cards, from their own country? PayPal is supposed to provide a solution for this, but only if you live in a western country. If you live in South America, Asia or Africa forget it, you can't use the service.
Even in the poorest developing countries there are still many individuals who have disposable income, but they are limited to spending it within their own markets, because of artificially imposed trade barriers, often set-up by the very companies that complain that they can't penetrate said market.
If you sell widgets online, and only allow payment via a Credit/Debit card with a US billing address, guess what, you will generally only make sales to people in the US. Everybody else relies on grey imports, and often the middle men\importers & smugglers will make more money than you on your own product.
I don't have a complete solution, as the topic is very complicated, but I am trying in my own tiny little way.
www.Buy-Proxy.com - A "buyer-driven" global marketplace.
How about ads for where to sell ^h^h^h^h donate a kidney? (running for the woods now...)
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I am sorry, but this is total BS. I have been developing web sites in Latin America (Mexico, Guatemala, Chile) for going on 10 years now. This might (MIGHT) apply to populations in Africa and some parts of Asia.Even there are people with money. If they have a computer, and sufficiently fast connection to watch things like U-tube, they have money.
This is the idiots fault for not doing their market research. There are trillions of dollars to be made in developing country because of demand for things that are not easy to find or limited selection. It is the advertisers fault for not being able to create mechanisms to deliver the goods and accept payment.
The problem is that what they are selling often requires a U.S. only credit card. Even people with credit cards, often have trouble buying things in the United States or Europe because they do not accept foreign cards.
Solve the payment problem, and the revenue is unlimited. There are often plenty of domestic web sites in developing countries making plenty of money.
As for advertising revenue, I have run many sites and know for a fact I can make many times the money for any given space on a popular site over what Google will pay me for it by selling to a domestic advertiser in a developing country.
The ignorance of that article is impressive.
Living in Chile
let it happen naturally. history shows forcing progress on people always results in some flavor of evil.
YouTube is already blocking content for other countries. So, regardless you are an american citizen, if you are in certain countries, you can't view many videos. Blocking content is NOT the solution! This will only lead to more isolation. I can't express well enough how dissapointed I am.
I really expected better from Google, can't believe that with Vinton Cerf as one of it's VPs and all many other enlightened ones over there they took this lame approach.
What has happened to the "Information should be free" motto I, as many of you, grew up with? Where are the "hacker ethics" now?
Suddenly it as all about bussines.
So what's next? Block the Ubuntu downloads to african people?! What a load of bullshit!!! They should be sorry and ashamed.
I run a profitable small web site in Latin America, and I believe there are two things to that make it difficult for US (or any high income country) web companies to make advertising profit in the deloping world.
1) The difficulty to reach (and get money from) local advertisers. Most advertising in the developing world is local, and most global ad networks have very little to non advertisers from this part of the world. That is, if you run a website in the developing world, there are almost none profitable ad networks to hook your site to, meaning that you need local ad sales teams, knocking on every customer door. This can make the operation less profitable and be complicated for US or Europe based companies.
2) The ad market is significantly smaller in the developing world. Whilst in the US total advertising is around $1.000 per inhabitant, in a middle income country like Panama, total advertising is around $100 per inhabitant.
There is one upside to this: the less overall market efficiency in the developing world makes relative prices to go up, and, if you operate locally, costs are significantly lower, compensating aforementioned facts and making it viable to profitably operate web companies in the developing world.
In conclusion, I believe that local sites (operated from each developing market/country) have a higher chance of making a profit from advertising related ventures.
The primary problem is that you need to understand your customers first, before trying to set up a business model.
Yeah, ads work in USA but doesn't work in Brazil. Why?
Simply because the culture is different. Brazil has one of the highest numbers of piracy. What is piracy? Get the same (or almost the same) for less, or yet, for free.
That's the main issue. 3rd world countries with high levels of piracy can tell a lot about the customers you will find. They're not buying your cheap Google Ad, simply because the products those banners sale are not cheap enough.
I have seen tons of websites that didn't made profits from Googl Ad, but made huge profits from banners of auctions web sites like Mercado Livre (an eBay like website).
The ads were explicitly anouncing products that tou couldn't find for less in anywhere else. (Including pirated products)
Yeah, that's what 3rd world people want, more for less. And you can be sure that those people will eat your resources until you discover how to make profit or charge by the service. When you charge for it, they will simply disappear and look for a similar one for free.
Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth
Can anyone clarify what on earth this part of the summary means? Isn't that like saying "we've only got really thin pipes, so we'll need a more powerful pump to force enough water through them?"
We are technologically advanced enough to provide basic needs of people for free. Homelessness and starvation should not exist in this world anymore but it does because of corporate and political greed. This discussion should not be how to make money off spreading technology in developing countries but how to educate and inform others around the world. The fact that we're having this discussion about not making money off of developing nations says something (not good) about our corrupt business/political system. Most of the blame can be laid at the hands of the private international banking system (such as the Federal Reserve Bank) for inflating our currency almost to oblivion (and they're not done yet). Do yourself a favour and watch the movie, Freedom to Fascism by Aaron Russo if you haven't already seen it. The corruption behind the scenes of our so-called elected officials is unbelievable once you have a look behind the curtain.
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
You insensitive clo... oh, I'm ashamed of myself.
The proposition before us is that the developing world is a profit sink for web companies. We have seen some excellent responses from participants from South America who suggest there is money to be made in developing countries if you know how. I remember reading about a company that garnered considerable success specializing in marketing to developing countries with some incredibly innovative thinking, and I feel the answer lies in this direction.
There was a country not mentioned as yet, however, that has a very quickly growing rate of internet participation, and that is China. I don't suppose they would have that much impact on sites like YouTube because of the cultural/language barrier, but on my own web site I have seen a tremendous increase in hits from China in just the past year. My web statistics tell me that in this past month, .cn was number 7 in the list for bytes transferred, and "unresolved numerical addresses" (which is usually China as well) was in the number 2 spot - both together accounting for 25% of content downloaded from my site.
This leads me to ponder - who are these people? I have never received any feedback from them, so they contribute nothing to me in that way. On my web site I have a humble offering of a few free software utilities, some of which have enjoyed wide-spread popularity, but basically it is just a hobby site. There is no advertising, and the bandwidth consumed overall is quite modest. However, though I have no problem with the Chinese people downloading my software, I do have a problem with the totalitarian Chinese government. For example, I hate what they are doing to the people of Tibet - deliberately trying to destroy their culture and religion. I also have a problem with how the Chinese government represses their own people, and the Great Firewall of China and censorship and everything else that comes with a totalitarian government. Just yesterday I got to thinking about maybe blocking China from my web site, but that would affect perfect innocent people, and then I had an idea. Why not just put a couple of lines on each web page saying things like "Free Tibet now!" and "Remember Tiananmen Square!", and let the Great Firewall of China block the .cn domain for me.
What is the impact of China on the Internet for others? What are your thoughts about it?
This is just capitalism in action. This is a variation of the "free rider" problem.
The logical extension of restricting entire countries because you can't derive revenue from them is to block *any* group of users that you can't derive revenue from if you can figure out how to do that.
The corollary is that you want to attract customers who you *are* likely to derive revenue from, so you create content to appeal to those groups.
If the marketing geniuses figure out that senior citizens are "unprofitable" as internet consumers, maybe that means blocking that group. Of course, that will probably anger people who realize that someday, they will be old and will therefore be blocked, so the strategy could backfire. It's a lot easier to block people from, say, Africa, because that affects someone else, a group that most consumers can't picture ever joining. It's also a group that can be blocked as a group without sacrificing valuable users.
How come Africans with pipes fat enough to watch streaming video are to poor to buy whatever crap that is advertised? Bandwith can't be that cheap in the 3rd world. Will adblock users be next? After all, we're just freeloading on the content and don't even see the ads.
Football Odds
...are nothing but a bunch of window shoppers, eh? Welcome to the world of retail where clerks have been forever been frustrated when asking the question "May I help you?" and being told "Nah. I'm just looking.".
Expect to see more of that by visitors from the developed world as unemployment continues to rise over the next year or so (if you believe the news) and their disposable income prevents them from buying as much as you need to maintain your websites and pay your advertisers.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
This server replicates postings to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to be read everywhere.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [yn]
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I'm sorry to tell you that after 8 years of Dubya, yes, they would.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
He was one of the comedy bits.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
As a native Brazilian who has worked in the past for American web companies, I know the two sides of the coin and right now there's really no good solution.
I noticed some other users mentioning that local sites *are* indeed profitable in third world countries and that's true. However, they have much lower operating costs, since its employees are cheaper to maintain. Also, each country has specific characteristics and it would be too expensive for a global service to customize their site to meet every single country needs, while a one-country-only service can do that easily.
The real issue is that ads pay much lower for a Brazilian click than they pay for a click coming from the US, for the same keywords. While a US ad would pay more than a dollar per-click, it's difficult to get more than a quarter per-click in Brazil. While the local companies can survive with the reduced revenue, it's not enough for US companies to survive.
Finally, from my own personal experience as a Brazilian who never lived outside of Brazil, I can say this the worst drawback really is what I call "the third world mindset". People just *won't pay* for internet services here. It's very very very difficult to make people to accept the concept of paying to access some website, specially after they're already spoiled as everything has been free on the internet so far.
Some users said people are willing to pay but they can't do it. This is not true. I use PayPal several times a year. It accepts my credit cards without any issues whatsoever. Most people have an international credit card and a lot of people buy online from the Brazilian online retailers. The difference is that they're buying *tangible* products or services.
Even in the poorer areas, where there's no broadband, people will go to "LAN houses" (how we call "Internet Cafes" here) and spend maybe a dollar a day for internet access (nevermind the fact that with $30/month they could actually get broadband at home). The point is, if they spend $30/month, they could easily afford paying maybe $3/month for, say, social network usage. However, they would never do it.
I've tried to convince a lot of people that pirating games is wrong. Even people who aspire to be game developers. Even smart people have trouble understanding why they should pay for something they can get for free. What are the benefits of buying a legitimate game versus a counterfeit copy. And so on.
It's a culture problem and you can't fix culture in a short time. So I just wish luck to those web entrepreneurs adventures in the muddy waters of the third world web economy.
I don't understand why would anyone buy anything by clicking on the ads appearing on webpages? I usually google the thing I want to buy, or just go to amazon, buy.com etc for price comparison. I don't think I will ever buy anything by clicking on ads. It is surprising to me that online ads can help sustain companies. Can someone please enlighten me? Thanks!
You don't like ban lists, use a proxy. Suck them dry and have a battalion of zombies download crap from their servers until they go out of biz. Do it know fellow cretins, do it now !!!!!!
I don't know if the guys at Viacom just realized this, but I'm no longer able to access Colbert/The Daily Show. /.!
Thanks
It's like russia, lots of money (online?) but the ideal in russia is you don't pay for stuff you can steal. That's the way it is and it is not going to change because someone starts "selling" it. That's so stupid to think that will change.
"The obvious answer is to distribute videos and other bandwidth-heavy content through a peer-to-peer mechanism such as Bittorrent."
Well no that's not the obvious answer because P2P isn't some magic bullet that will solve world hunger nor economic nonparticipants.
NOTE: This post may appear to be a trifle bitter in tone. That's because it is.
Let me speak from my personal experience of living these last 5+ years in a developing country: It's the developed world's own goddamn fault that we don't pay for things online.
The cost of delivering the content is constant for the provider. The cost for the receiver, on the other hand, is insanely high. I'm sharing a 128Kbps ADSL line with 2 others right now, at a total price of about US $55 per month. A 256Kbps line costs US $150. A 512Kbps line is about US $350 (recently reduced from $440). The only reason for this pricing is a monopoly on Internet services jointly controlled by France Telecom and Cable & Wireless.
For reference, the monthly minimum wage (for the minority who actually have work) is about US $250.
But even if we could download things, we couldn't pay for them online, because credit cards are virtually impossible to get from local banks. And by local banks, I mean of course franchises of Australian giants ANZ and Westpac.
We can't get credit cards because we have bad credit ratings. We have bad credit ratings because the average interest rate for a first-time borrower is 23%.
But most of us can't even get a first loan because the one collateral we have, customary land holdings, is not accepted unless it's been leased to someone or commercialised in some way. Most people are not willing to sell their birthright - and their children's only wealth - just for a good credit rating.
But even if we could get a local credit card, the majority of sites online won't accept them because of the risk, coming as it does from a country with (surprise!) poor credit history.
Debit services like Paypal don't even know we exist. Suddenly, the fact that our banks are franchises of regional giants has no bearing on anything.
To sum up: So you don't want to let me access your content? How terribly surprisingly. Fuck you very much and have a nice fucking day.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
As someone who spends a large part of the year in developing countries, I'm constantly annoyed by the 'content not available in your country' error.
And they say the internet doesn't follow borders . . .
Keep free content freely available by reducing availability costs and setting up infrastructure to not rely on advertising profits or other participatory "gimmicks" to maintain content access.
Utilize and expand the already present BitTorrent protocol (quit streaming from centralized servers... Why not set up your streaming video to utilize a modified BitTorrent platform that also promotes user interaction among not just the users, but the people who host the files too?)
Distribution of content must be rewarding in itself if content is truly free or remain freely available, and his is true for all parties involved.
Okay, let me just introduce you to a place I once knew well. It was a place called the internet, circa 1999. ... ALL OF IT. ... all of my kitchen appliances were bought online. My espresso machine. My coffee grinder. My pot rack. My blender.
Back then, apparently, I was a pioneer. I bought all my software and some of my computer hardware online.
In 2001, I spent four figures online, when no-one else spent much of anything (according to the stats, anyway).
One year after that, I spent five figures online. Just barely, but still.
Today, if I don't need to eat it, or test it, I don't even shop locally, and I spend $20K online every year. That is roughly 70% of my disposable income.
No, really. I buy everything online. I buy all my clothes online; all my electronics; all my music, all my movies. Not some
This year
Did I mention I don't live in the US? Did I mention that at least 50% of all that spending was with US merchants?
Okay, let me put it this way. Introduce 10-year ad contracts. You can sign up for whatever, but the guys who sign up for 10 years get a break today and a guarantee that I will have ad space for you in 2019. Everyone else? Not so much.
Now tell me that you are losing money, and that there is no value in catering to those "money losing" second and third world countries.
Trust me ... Amazon knew what they were doing. Everyone else plays catchup today. A smart social network plays the reality of future eyes to advertisers versus building a presence today. Those who think only of today are welcome to today, because today turns into yesterday at a very predictable rate.
Sure, there is no money in it in 2009. This just in ... 2009 turns into 2010, and not at some random moment (like the stock market) but in exactly x number of days.
If you can't see the profit in that, you deserve to be left behind. And you will.
I am curious to find out which country you live in. It must be somewhere close to here (aus) because you mentioned Westpac et al.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Finally we can see here the limits of the so called "Internet Model" were company provide services for free in return for advertisments. Maybe the entry of devevelopping world in the Web arena will promote back the old reasonnable model where you actually sell something (a good or a service) and customers buy if it meets their need with at the proper price point
32" HD LCD it's around $450 USD
And a 27" SD CRT is around 0 USD because you own it and it still works. A lot of people aren't going to want to pay 450 USD just for the privilege of watching YouTube or whatever on a larger monitor. Case in point: During the transition to digital television in the United States, far more people paid 50 USD for an ATSC tuner to watch major-label broadcast TV than 50 USD for a VGA-to-S-Video converter to watch independent IPTV.
What happened to last.fm?
On the other hand, your country isn't carrying a national debt like the United States, which amounts to $110,000 per home and climbing ($170,000 by 2016). From my viewpoint, you're actually better off because you are not on the verge of bankruptcy like we are.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall