According to the Miniwatts Marketing Group's Internet Usage and World Population Statistics (last updated March 31, 2006), worldwide Internet penetration is only 15.7%! So much for the World Wide Web... this is indeed sobering stuff for those of us obsessed with 'web 2.0' technology. Here's the main table of stats:
|
WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
World Regions |
Population |
%
Population |
Usage |
Usage
Growth |
|
14.1 % |
2.6 % |
2.3 % |
423.9 % |
|
|
56.4 % |
9.9 % |
35.6 % |
218.7 % |
|
|
12.4 % |
36.1 % |
28.5 % |
177.5 % |
|
|
2.9 % |
9.6 % |
1.8 % |
454.2 % |
|
|
5.1 % |
68.6 % |
22.2 % |
110.3 % |
|
|
8.5 % |
14.4 % |
7.8 % |
342.5 % |
|
|
0.5 % |
52.6 % |
1.7 % |
134.6 % |
|
|
WORLD TOTAL |
100.0 % |
15.7 % |
100.0 % |
183.4 % |
Source: World Internet Usage Statistics and Population Stats (nb: removed two columns to make it fit)
In North America, where most Web innovations still come from, the penetration figure is 68.6%. However in Africa it's just 2.6%, Asia 9.9% and the Middle East 9.6%. Together Africa, Asia and Middle East make up 73.4% of the world's population. So that basically means 3/4 of the world has extremely low Internet penetration. The one positive note is that usage growth rates are encouraging (see column on the right).
Interesting to note that China, seen by most analysts as a big growth market for Web technologies, has an Internet penetration of only 8.5%. Considering that great parts of China are rural, this isn't overly surprising. Also mobile technologies have a much bigger impact in China, than the PC.
Still, these figures put things into perspective. I feel very lucky to live in a country (New Zealand) that has 76.3% penetration - even if the broadband is slow and expensive!
p.s. amazing how in these circumstances Pete
Cashmore has managed to get 5 billion RSS subscribers ;-)
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Worldwide Internet Penetration is just 15%.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2677
Very interest statistics published on the World Internet Usage Statistics and Population. Basically from this table it shows that only 15%! of the worlds use the internet which surprisingly low. I suppose since Asia alone has over 50% of worlds popu... Read More
Secondo un recente rapporto pubblicato da Internet World Stat, la penetrazione media di internet tra la popolazione a livello globale sarebbe pari a un modesto 15,7 per cento. Isolando il dato relativo a ciascun continente, si scopre senza sorpresa che... Read More
Richard MacManus had a sobering post on Monday about global internet penetration levels and just how big the digital divide is between North and South (one of the many political science phrases used to distinguish the developed and developing worlds). Read More
Those data are hard usually hard to find. Enjoy! Link ... Read More
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this is why mobile is so important. Many of these places will start using the web on their mobile phones before they have the ability to use it on a pc
Posted by: Hashim | May 30, 2006 4:27 AMI was looking at the stats of top 20 countries and interestingly Japan's internet adoption has dropped according to those stats from 2000 - 2005 which i found surprising.
Very useful resource though, especially for anyone looking to make multi-language web applications. I wonder how the stats are figured out.
Posted by: Derek Organ | May 30, 2006 6:44 AMOnly 5 billion? I guess my subscriber numbers go down at weekends. :)
Posted by: Pete Cashmore | May 30, 2006 7:18 AMI believe that less than 50% of the world's population has access to a telephone, much less the internet. Much of the world still relies on radio and word-of-mouth for their information.
Posted by: Marcello | May 30, 2006 1:24 PMYeah, despite the low penetration, those growth figures are encouraging for us south americans too.
Posted by: ismael | May 30, 2006 8:58 PMI think personal P2P (P4?) application are important and might be stronger than traditionnal P2P networks.
Basically it is your own FTP server. Something a lot of geeks have already...
One important marketing issue how much the barrier to entry is low. This is why so many start-up are going for it. But user socioeconomic is really close to IM and social software (Friendster, MySpace,...).
MSN Messenger have already a component to allow file sharing between two contacts (without sending it explicitely). The grown ups are already coming in. Is it already the end of those new companies?
Posted by: Nicolas Toper | May 31, 2006 4:16 PM