Statistics - One billion internet users - what it means
Posted by MattE on 22 Dec 2005 at 10:10 am | Tagged as: Marketing, Media, Web
Jakob Nielsen writes that in 2005 the internet welcomed its one billionth user. He says that statistically, this internet user is likely to be a 24 year old female in Shanghai.
Also consider these other statistics:
According to Morgan Stanley estimates, 36% of Internet users are now in Asia and 24% are in Europe. Only 23% of users are in North America,
By 2015, Americans will be less than 15% of Internet users and will likely account for about one-third its value (Americans typically spend more than other users). The fact that two-thirds of Internet revenues will come from other countries highlights the growing importance of international usability.
The second billion will probably be added by 2015; most of these new users will be in Asia.
As Nielsen discusses in his article, the needs of the new internet users are very different to that of old. For instance, today there are far fewer ‘geeks’ as a percentage of users than even a few years ago. This means your website MUST be usable by people expecting better ease-of-use who have perhaps no assumed technical skill and who are likely to be older than the commonly assumed under 50 year old.
With the shift to the ‘new markets’ of Asia and India, there is also the need to address language (correct translation or presentation in i.e. Chinese script) and cultural issues of websites and information presentation and sales processes.
While the cultural imperialism of the USA has heavily influenced how things are done on the web, the shift to greater numbers of culturally significantly different users lays many challenges and some highly exciting opportunities in front of us all.
