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:
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 😉
