Internet Statistics and Numbers

It has been quite a while since I wrote about the social networking space in India. Last time I wrote about this was with respect to the December 2008 numbers when Orkut was a clear leader that had been fighting a new kid on the block; Facebook. Back then, Orkut had 12.8 million monthly visits compared to Facebook’s 4 million. Now a year and a half later, the tide has finally shifted in favor of Facebook. The world’s largest social network has not spared India and has taken over Orkut as the most popular network. According to the Comscore metrics, Facebook now has over 20.8 million monthly visits from India – marginally above Orkut’s 19.8 million.

Here are the top ten social networks in India in terms of uniques in July 2010 according to the Comscore metrics.

1. Facebook : 20.87 million
2. Orkut : 19.87 million
3. BharatStudent : 4.32 million
4. Yahoo Pulse : 3.5 million
5. Twitter : 3.34 million
6. LinkedIn : 3.26 million
7. Zedge : 3.2 million
8. Ibibo : 2.96 million
9. Yahoo Buzz : 1.8 million
10. Shtyle : 1.55 million

An article I wrote back in October 2007 – Will Facebook overtake Orkut in India makes for a good read about a time when Facebook was the 16th most popular site in India.

The internet is slowly getting mobile. Wired.com had an article recently that proclaimed that the web was dead and the future was in the mobile apps. So, given such discussions, it is fair to assume that mobile phones are going to be a very significant area of marketing in the years to come. Consequently, mobile advertising is picking up too and jargons like CTR (Click through rate) that used to be limited to the web is now being used for the mobile platform as well.

So which platform offers the best returns for the advertiser? In a study of iPhone, iPad and Android plaforms, Chitika found that Android users were the most heavy ad-clickers. However, is this a positive thing? Some observers like Om Malik point out that the higher click-throughs on Android could stem from the fact that the older versions like 1.5 and 1.6 had clunkier user interfaces that may have confused the user with respect to differentiating ads from actual content. While that is plausible, it’s not entirely convincing. Here are the CTRs measured over the three platforms

iPhone : 0.654%
iPad : 1.01%
Android : 1.187%

Why do you think CTRs on Android phones are better?

How much spending goes online when you take away the travel bookings part? According to a study conducted by Comscore, the growth of retail eCommerce spending that excludes travel-bookings has been slowing down over the years. This is how the growth has been – In the second quarter of 2007, retail eCommerce grew 23% year-over-year. This number came down to 13% by Q2 2008. Thanks to recession, there was a fall in the spending numbers in 2009 with Q2 of that year registering a fall of 1% YoY. Now, finally, there has been growth in retail ecommerce spending this year. However, the growth percentage is not as splendid as it once was at 9%.

Here is the retail eCommerce spending in absolute value over the past few years.

Q2 2007 : $27.97 billion
Q2 2008 : $30.58 billion
Q2 2009 : $30.17 billion
Q2 2010 : $32.94 billion

With mobile phones getting smarter by the day, the number of people who access gaming applications on their mobile phone is definitely on the rise. Consequently, we have a number of new startups focusing on this specific market segment. While a majority of such mobile gaming applications make money either via gaming credits or requiring a paid dowload, some game developers also sustain on volumes and make money off ads.

According to a recent report on eMarketer, the revenues from mobile gaming is estimated to reach $1.5 billion by 2014. At this point, more than $1.3 billion is expected to be from paid gaming – a thumping victory for this monetization model.

Here is the revenues that are expected to be made from mobile games over the next few years. The percent contribution from paid games (as opposed to ad-supported) is provided inside brackets.

2009 : $627 million (94.3%)
2010 : $849 million (93.4%)
2011 : $1.028 billion (92.5%)
2012 : $1.1734 billion (90.9%)
2013 : $1.3767 billion (89.2%)
2014 : $1.514 billion (87.7%)

Ad spending on social networks is on the rise and as it is in other segments of the digital media, US leads the pack when it comes to advertiser adoption. However, thanks to the terrific adoption of social networks, Facebook in particular, across the globe, advertisers in other parts of the world are taking cognizance as well. According to a report by eMarketer, US and the rest of the world shall more or less even out in ad-spending on social networks by next year. That is still a signficant lead for USA when you consider we are comparing one country against the rest of the world.

So, this is the ad spend in USD across US and non-US over a three year span. The percentage of total ad spend worldwide is provided in brackets.

USA
2009 : $1.40 billion (55.4%)
2010 : $1.68 billion (51%)
2011 : $2.09 billion (49.1%)

Non-USA
2009 : $1.13 billion (44.6%)
2010 : $1.62 billion (49%)
2011 : $2.17 billion (50.9%)

Like it is elsewhere, Facebook is the most popular social network and the second biggest website in the Blighty. However, the social network is facing a slowdown in growth – not because it is getting less popular, but because there are not enough people on the internet to take the growth forward – Less than 10 million of the total 37.6 million online adults in the UK today do not have a Facebook account! To put it more appropriately, Facebook in UK is inching towards a point of saturation.

Thanks to the popularity, Facebook is already the largest website by a mile in terms of pageviews – the website receives close to double the number of page-views that Google receives in UK. So here are some interesting facts about Facebook in UK

• Second largest website in the UK

• Facebook traffic made up
  • 7.14% of all internet visits
  • 16.73% of all internet pageviews
  • 54% of all social network visits

• 26 million Facebook accounts in UK

Students are increasingly being lured towards Macbooks, a recent study by Student Monitor has showed. In their recent report, the Ridgewood, NJ based research firm has noted that 47% of the 87% of students who were contemplating a laptop purchase were contemplating the purchase of an Apple Macbook. Consequently, the level of interest on Dell and HP was seen at just 12% and 11% respectively.

So what this has resulted in is that more than one-fourth of laptops on campus are now being made by Apple. Apple and Dell now make up more than 50% of all laptops on campus. HP now makes it to number three – at 15% market share.

The study is a grim reminder for Dell of its glorious days not so long ago. A Student Monitor study back in 2005 showed interest in Dell laptop at 47%. Macs back then had a 14% interest level.

So this is how the market share among laptops stack up in the student community

Apple : 27%
Dell : 24%
HP : 15%
Toshiba : 10%
Compaq : 4%
Sony : 5%
Gateway : 4%
Acer : 4%
Lenovo : 2%
Others : 5%

Men or Women – Who do you think own a majority share in smartphone ownership? Not being chauvinistic, but I found the results from this study entirely along expected lines. A recent study from ComScore shows that over 60% of smartphones in the US and European Union (measured across France, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain) are owned by men.

According to Comscore, a reason for this gender imbalance could come from the fact that male are early technology adopters and hence are more likely to be attracted to these newly launched gizmos. Additionally, the report also suspects the possibility for men to be high wage-earners as well as have a part of their mobile bill being paid by the employer as reasons for higher smartphone adoption.

Percent smartphones owned by men in US
April 2009 : 59%
April 2010 : 60%

Percent smartphones owned by men in EU5
April 2009 : 66%
April 2010 : 63%

An Interesting Related Article - Blackberry owners are predominantly female

Zombie computers are those machines that are hacked by spammers with the help of computer virus so that they may be used as a host to send out thousands of spam messages. A study conducted by McAfee earlier this year showed that USA, Brazil and India are among the leading nations when it comes to producing spam. However, the report noted that China, USA and Brazil are countries that host the maximum number of zombie computers. India is nowhere in the top 10.

In a somewhat contrary note, CommTouch has come up with its latest quarterly security report where the researchers have noted that India has just overtaken Brazil as the country with the largest number of zombie computers. According to the report, here are the top ten countries and the percentage of zombie computer that they host.

1. India : 13%
2. Brazil : 11%
3. Vietnam : 6%
4. Germany : 5%
5. Russia : 5%
6. USA : 4%
7. Argentina : 3%
8. China : 3%
9. Saudi Arabia : 3%
10. Italy : 3%
11. Columbia : 2%
12. UK : 2%
13. Argentina : 2%
14. Romania : 2%
15. Poland : 2%

What percent of the world’s total internet users come from USA? or China, Japan or India for that matter? According to reports from Cisco, China and USA alone contribute more than a third of the total internet users in the world. By that same measure, China and Japan together constitute one-fourth of the total users. Now, here is a tabulation of the top countries in terms of internet users and the percent of internet users they contribute to the total world numbers.

1. China : 20.8%
2. USA : 13.1%
3. Japan : 5.5%
4. India : 4.7%
5. Brazil : 3.9%
6. Germany : 3.1%
7. UK : 2.7%
8. Russia : 2.6%
9. France : 2.5%
10. South Korea : 2.2%
11. Iran : 1.9%
12. Italy : 1.7%
13. Indonesia : 1.7%
14. Spain : 1.7%
15. Mexico : 1.6%
16. Turkey : 1.5%
17. Canada : 1.4%
18. Philippines : 1.4%
19. Vietnam : 1.3%
20. Poland : 1.2%

According to this study, there are close to 1.734 billion internet users across the world. That makes the United States and China the only two countries to have more than 100 million internet users in their region.
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