We look at the state of the search engine wars in Asia and if Google is indeed winning the hearts and minds of Asian consumers.

There are more than 510 million internet users in Asia, according to Internet World Stats. Although that is nearly 40 percent of internet users worldwide, it only represents 13.7 percent of Asia's population. The story in those numbers says there is a lot of room for growth, which was at nearly 350 percent between 2000 and 2007. Asia will continue to add online users in great numbers, in fact, China recently overtook the US in the number of internet users.

Search engines are undeniably becoming the gateway to the web. When you think of search engines, Google is top of mind. After all, according to ComScore's end of year report, Google dominates the world with a 62.4 percent share of searches compared to all the other web search properties. The next closest web search property is Yahoo, at a paltry 12.8 percent share of searches. But closer scrutiny reveals the battlefields of Asia show a completely different story, and in some places such as Korea, Google is little more than a footnote.

The search engine wars reveal Google's vulnerability and clearly indicate that it certainly isn't winning the hearts and minds of internet users in Asia. The search engine giant is clearly leading in the battle in countries like India and Malaysia, where English seems to the lingua franca of the web. Perhaps, Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is a strategy to win the search engine wars in Asia and for Microsoft to gain a strong position to move the battle to the rest of the world.

An emerging trend that could change the balance of power is mobile search. China is the world's largest mobile phone market with 540.5 million users, followed by the U.S., with 260.5 million wireless subscribers. India has 250 million. According to a recent report by Juniper Research, annual revenues generated by mobile search services are expected to reach $4.8bn by 2013. Asia and, in particular, China, will generate the most revenues from mobile search services over the next five years, followed by Western Europe and North America, according to the report.

The major battlefields

China
China recently surpassed the U.S. to become the world's largest internet market based on number of internet users, according to Beijing-based consulting and research firm BDA. This is despite the fact that the internet penetration rate in China is at only 16.6 percent. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reported that the number of China internet users was at 210 million at the end of 2007. Nielsen//NetRatings indicated that the number of internet users in the U.S. was at 216 million for that same time frame. But with the number of internet users in China reportedly increasing by around 200,000 each day, China took the lead in March of this year.

This puts China squarely in the front lines of the search engine wars in Asia. The leading search engine in China is Baidu with more than 60 percent market share, followed by Google at 20 percent and Yahoo with only seven percent.

India
Google dominates the market in India with a market share of more than 80 percent, offering search in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil. India has 60 million internet users, which represents an internet penetration rate of only 5.3 percent. This leaves a lot of room for growth.

Next week, we wil analyse the search engine markets in Japan and Korea, and what it takes to gain a strong hold on Asia's search engine industry.

David Temple is regional head of search at Neo@Ogilvy.