Photo/Zhang Jian

Nov. 29 (NBD) – The vast amount of elderly Internet users has brought about an emerging market that tech companies cannot afford to ignore. 

According to a report on elderly mobile Internet users, China now has more than 80 million senior netizens, who have risen to become a core group of Internet users, a position formerly dominated by the trendy young generation.

It is noted that the grey-haired population not only frequently uses financing, shopping and square dancing apps, but also favors beautification cameras and Karaoke apps. 

The time they spend on Internet exceeds common expectation as well. According to a Tencent survey, the daily average time elder people spend on WeChat is 1.37 hours, only 0.49 hour less than the youngsters. 

At a forum on better Internet experience for seniors held by Tencent on Sunday, 62-year-old Wang Jinxiang shared her life as an Internet celebrity on the popular Karaoke platform QuanMinKGe. She has won over 220,000 loyal followers in three years, most of whom are people of her age.

Wang belongs to the group of active elder users who not only consume but also create contents.

However, the online world is not friendly enough to the group and one of the problems lies in the operational complexity of many communication applications, observed Li Xinqian, director of Research Center of Sleep Medicine of Taipei Medical Universtiy, at the forum.

Elder people should have their own connectivity to Internet, which presents a challenge as well as an opportunity, said Li.

Tan Siliang, founder of mobile content aggregator Qutoutiao, considers the middle-aged and elder population as the last opportunity for fast growth in the mobile Internet sector. 

The Internet penetration rate in the group aged from 10 to 40 years old has kept higher than 90 percent which means very limited space for growth, revealed Tan in a keynote speech at a content industry summit on Thursday. 

But 275 million Chinese aged 40 to 59 are not connected to Internet, which means 100 million new Internet users, according to a conservative penetration rate of 40 percent.

Tan thinks these emerging markets are pivotal for China's Internet industry in the next three years, and attributed Qutoutiao's success to targeting these groups at the outset.

Tech behemoth Alibaba also sees the potential in the grey-haired population. Earlier this year, Alibaba offered an alluring annual pay of 400,000 yuan (57,676 U.S. dollars) to recruit user experience consultants over the age of 60, whose job is to work with designers to make its e-commerce platform Taobao more elderly-friendly.

It is estimated that by 2020, consumption by people over 60 will reach 15 trillion U.S. dollars, a scale only second to the GDP of U.S., said Cai Xinling, CEO of Silver Linings Global, citing an analysis by Bank of America.

Aging is a universal trend regardless of cultural background, and the current grey-haired population is unprecedented in human history. Therefore, the Internet industry needs to design differentiated products and services for the elderly, added Cai.

Email: limenglin@nbd.com.cn