internet - User growth drops dramatically

China has now 94 million internet users and the Chinese media bring this as a great achievement - they find it very hard not to see anything with rosy glasses. But the sad truth is that growth has dropped dramatically. Up to now the number of users would almost double every year and the growth rate of 18 percent is really very low. In the second half of last year, the target was still 100 million users by the end of the year.
Reason might be that in all bigger cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, the percentage of internet users has passed the 50 percent and expanding the network to the rest of the country might be a bigger challenge than expected.