Breaking into new markets is a huge and risky step. In order not to be left behind, we must learn from the industry leaders and if we cannot be the pioneers, we can at least follow their strategy. They know how important multilingual products are, and that they have to localize both their products and content in order to cover as many languages as possible. Even a small presence in another language can bring revenue increment of gigantic proportions. Recent case study for a global company showed a 25 times Return on Investment for every dollar spent on localization. Many companies who sell only online realized their revenue doubled or tripled after localizing their content for wider audience.
Localization forums and conferences are echoing the words that not having a multilingual website in couple of years will be almost as bad as not having a website at all.
The Internet World Stats providing statistics about Top 10 Internet Countries in Europe backs this up with some eye opening up-to-date facts. The same organization shows that in 2010 English represented only 26,80% of the Internet in Language Usage.
Internet is rapidly expanding, the number of people who buy products online is growing, and the power of multilingual information is increasing, day in day out.
Remember that people think, talk and live their own language. They buy products, localized products, in their own language. Companies who focus on online presence clearly understand the potential. Invest in good quality localization, and take the new market by the hand.